Reinventing Myself - Asking Questions

I never thought that I would become such a waste. A couple of days back, when I was talking to my father about my childhood, he told me that I used to ask a lot of questions. He also told me (and I still vaguely remember) that I used to experiment a lot with electric switches and would be playing with 230V, 5A AC power.

Over a period of time, I totally lost myself. I did not ask questions and I did not experiment. Experimenting things and asking questions go hand in hand. When you have questions, we used to experiment and when we experiment things we tend to get a lot of questions. Experimentation together with questioning curiosity what is needed for life - may it be professional career or our personal lives.

The decisions come out of experimentation and outcome of asking several questions is certainly thought through and likely to yield more results. I learned it again couple of months back and I m currently going through a personal journey of reinventing my childhood. I hope that this journey will be fruitful and transform me.

Value - Only Word That is Cheap

Value is by far the most misused word in corporate world. When you are running a business, it makes sense when you say you want to create value. "Value" is a key ingredient to be successful. For me the term value in business is this. You and your customer did not sign something as a part of your contract, stated objectives or none of your competitors do that. When it becomes part of the contract or objectives it is no longer a value and when your competitors also create "value" the value that you create becomes basic expectations.

If you are so serious of creating value, it has to be part of your strategy, you have advertise it among your employees who eventually create value for your customer and you have to execute and review the progress sensibly. As "value creation" is over and above your base deliverable, during the inception phase, do not push things too much. Also, do not overdo things and particularly overdoing here will hurt.

Last but not least. When you create value, it is visible to the customers. You don't need to put them in every slide that you run in your organization. Do not blow things up. If there is no reaction from the customer, stop talking non sense and move on. When it comes to "value", what the customer experienced because of the value is more important than the value.

It is highly important that we understand "value" else the value becomes cheap.

Being Early - Live Example

Today, I went for an haircut which was long due. The last night, I planned to have my haircut in Naturals and I called them few times in the morning but no one was there to answer. I wanted to try my luck by directly going to their salon. I went there to only see the shop not yet opened. There is a Green Trends salon very near to Naturals and I thought I could make an appointment with them at 8.30 am. I went there and asked whether I had any free slot in the morning.

To my surprise, they said they had free slot immediately. At 8 a.m. I had my haircut and never even looked back Naturals. In Green Trends, I found at least 10 customers. If these 10 customers visit them 10 times a year, they easily make 100 more sales than Naturals. If they work on their net margin, they are more profitable than Naturals. While I was having haircut, I was deeply thinking about being early and how it helps in business. Both the salons deal with people in the higher income range. Green Trends seems to understand the importance of being early (everyday) and Naturals needs to learn a lot in being early.

This is again an example on how being early helps in business. This example can be extrapolated to any industry. Being early always has an edge over being late. It was a good learning experience today.

Giving Back - Company Should be a Community

Almost of all Indian IT companies have enjoyed tax incentives in the name of IT export and creating high end technology jobs in India. We continue to enjoy monetary benefits in the name of tax incentives. These tax incentives in no way are less. IT industry have been enjoying these and it is fair to say that this has become one of the key strategies to make money (or at very least to increase profit). Whenever the government says its plan to cut the incentives, the industry voices and makes sure that they get some form of incentives.

If we look at the other side, are we fair enough. We simply forget the fact that we get incentive on tax which otherwise will go to welfare of the people (well some part to welfare of people and some part to welfare for politicians). Most of the IT companies fail to remember that they have to "give back". The companies have to give back to people in terms of money, time, efforts. Apart from transforming their businesses, the customer businesses, employees, we must "give back" to the country. Unless we give back, we will not get back. Simple logic.

When I traveled back to India from US, I happen to meet Mr Jayen Desai, Head Business Excellence, Applied Electronics. He talked about the role of an industry in national development. Particularly, with the technology expertise that IT industry possesses, we can do a lot to our nation. Will we get time to do it? Can each company become a community?

PS: The few minutes discussion with Mr Jayen Desai in Super Shuttle (from San Jose to SFO airport) is one of the defining moment and one of the most productive time in my professional career.

Indian IT Industry - Be Responsible

Indian IT industry doesn't seem to understand the importance of quality of resource. Most of them make offers out of which many are bad offers. If we think that "bad offers" is an exception that can be discounted as it is negligible, we are dead wrong. Anyone with an Engineering degree (with few days of reading a programming language) can get into IT and get six digit salary. I hear interviewers saying, he is good in concepts, struggles a bit in programming but trainable. Neither the mediocre create value for the organization nor the organization creates any value to its clients. Together, we create mess.

The quality of people that get into the organization not only affects the performance or morale that exist in the team. It also creates a devastating effects to the culture of the organization. As more mediocre people get in, they deliver mediocre results and they make everyone around them mediocre. The only reason why I find we are happy in hiring mediocre people is to fill the positions and to get that "extra" bucks (and bugs). Indian IT, please be responsible. If we are not responsible, we have to pay heavy prize. China is no longer non English speaking country. So, is that the reason why most of top Indian IT opened up shops in China.