My Teacher, My Role Model - Prof C K Prahalad

A couple of years back, when I was attending an event of setting organizational vision at my workplace, I happen to hear one of my teammates (yes, my CEO, Mr. Vineet Nayar) speaking about Prof. C.K Prahalad. Quite impressed that, I happen to read his book "Competing for the Future". Slowly but steadily Prof C K Prahalad happen to occupy my mind. Many teachers have made very big impact in me and helped me to be where I am today. But Prof. C.K Prahalad is very rarest teacher in a sense that he makes me to think where I should be in 10 years from now. Prof C K Prahalad is a Cheeranjevi (the person who never dies) and I believe still he is alive. Here is one of the videos that inspired me.

Questions Are Pointers and Answers Are Dead End

How will you earn a million rupees is next two years? Assume that someone is asking this question to you or you are asking this question to yourself. If we fixate our focus on finding answers, we will probably find some answers that are widely accepted. When we start decomposing a question into many questions and when we question the relevancy of the question, we will find much better questions that provokes thinking. Each question shape up thinking and thinking helps us to anticipate probables. Most of the man made events in this world are non deterministic and only way that we can sail through is by anticipation. Questions helps us to anticipate probables. Only when we question, our ignorance surfaces and only when our ignorance crops up we make an initiative to learn and only when we learn we ask more questions. This is never ending cycle and probably ends when we cease.

If you keep asking questions, when you will find answers? Keep questioning doesn't signify  the absence of answers and in fact each question will have answer. The key here is to derive questions out of each answers and the objective is to move beyond the obvious and abstract ideas. If you look at questions, they are pointers and they shape our thinking. But definitive answers are dead ends. It is not a real dead end. It is our mental condition, limitation and satisfaction on the answer.

So, the questions are pointers for reproductive thinking and definitive answers are dead end towards reproductive thinking.

Artificial (Fake) Chaining - Can We Break It?

There was an elephant near a temple. An iron chain was tied around his leg and the other end of the chain was hanging free. The elephant was believing that he was tied to the stone pillar near him. He was thinking that he wouldn't be able to move as he was tied, very tightly. He wanted to go to jungle to have deep bath. He wanted to eat green plants to live an healthy life. He wanted to be around like sized and like minded individuals. But he thought he couldn't go because he thought that he didn't have strength to break the chain. I m not talking about the elephant that you heard in some story. It is us - you and me. We never realize that we are not tied. Once we were tied and we still think that we are tied forever. For some of us, we have an opportunity and privilege to be tied with a golden chain.

This perception is not a problem until you realize. If you believe that there are 24 hours in day, one day you will wake up to find that there is only 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. Someone may steal one second from you without your permission. Someone will say that you have to work in the way he wants and say that it will give satisfaction to you. Someone may dream for you and say that it is the purpose of your life. If you let that happen, you will be sitting like a duck that is ready to be butchered. Absolutely there will be no notable difference. Only difference is - the duck quacks but we speak.

Don't curse them. It is the way they have be asked to operate. They are doing it thinking that they are chained which is not true. We are totally stuck in disbelief about ourselves and we are doing total disservice to ourselves. But the irony is we want to grow. Growth is not a matter, growing up is a matter. I feel that the biggest conspiracy that is quite successful in this society is this "chaining". The conditioning hinders the free flow thinking. Get rid of the conditioning and grow up.

Sometime back, I heard from someone in a respectable position that I cannot do two things. But the issue is that those two things are done by single guy few years back. He was quite immersed in status quo and very strong view. But the problem with his strong view is that it cannot be changed and it hindered him  from seeing my perspective. We don't need strong views. We just need free flow views. He is deeply chained with golden chain decorated with diamonds. How sweet it is, a trouble is a trouble, probably we can call it a nice trouble or sweet trouble. But trouble is a trouble.

How to Transform Your Workplace BY Transforming Individuals

Leading people is no different from parenting. Our parents are highly influential and inspire in our personal lives. They crafted our life in a best possible way and that is why we feel so good about them. They gave us everything but yet never blow things up. But, at work, why we aren't parenting? Why are we so focused only on our growth, prosperity and satisfaction and less focus on people that we are privileged to lead. Based on my experience, I have few thoughts on leadership and followership. This is a daily ritual and this is not something like "panic and patch" or "invest and harvest today". This has to be your leadership lifestyle and lifeline. Never cross the lifeline :-)

Listen

People think speaking is leadership. They speak a lot and lot endlessly and without any boundary on subject and time. When you speak, you understand less about the people and the issues that block them. Rather try to listen. Listening is a great skill which is quite different from hearing. While hearing, we don't empathize and it is the sound waves hitting the ear drum. Listening is interpreting and empathizing. If you are more serious about listening, try to take a notepad and keep taking notes. One of the advantages of listening is that you get an opporunitity to see many perspectives of the subject under discussion. The person whom you are listening to will feel like a hero because you are LISTENING him. While listening make an official eye contacts and have each eye contacts crisp and short. You may show some gestures that is welcoming and shows that you are authentic listener.

Respect 

There is nothing greater than being respected. Keep your hand on your heart and say won't you feel happy if someone respects you. Respecting and acknowledging the respect is a fantastic thing. When done properly, the person who is respected feels that he earns the respect and this improves synergy in the team. Everyone in the team works like a rock star. They love to work and show at least 100% at work, if not more. How to show that you are respecting your teammate? It is simple. Before taking any crucial decisions, consult your teammate and take their opinions. Count on them and make them to have their head high. If you have any doubt on how respecting will improve performance, try to respect a kid that is lesser than 2 years old.

Understand

The next thing that comes is "understanding". When you listen and respect your teammate, understanding blossoms automatically. Understanding is nothing but everyone in your team sells every others in the team authentically. Understanding is about having confidence in your teammate that he is a champion and stand by him in an occasional setback. People too understand that failures are bound to happen when they become extraordinary. Once you stand by him, even if your competitors give him 400% hike, he just stands by you like a dog. But listening and respecting should precede "understanding" so as to make "understanding" authentic.

Coach

One of the key requirements for modern day managers/leaders is ability to coach and mentor the juniors. If you listen to freshers, most of them (if not all of them) say that they see work as school and their leads as coaches. Nothing is on par with the coach. He commands, scolds, yells, appreciates and pushes his student. Set them a very big vision for their career in line with their aspirations  (and set aspirations in some cases) and its impact on their career. Build a skill that they will cherish/reflect when they retire. If you are mentoring freshers, just tell them that you are coaching a CEO not an entry level guy. Their eyes really go bright.

Challenge

Push the performance envelope. Many records are broken everyday. They aren't records but benchmarks to be reached and redefined. Never make them to touch the ceiling. If they touch the ceiling, it may lead to complacency. Rising the bars to a level that it appears neither it is too easy nor too difficult to achieve. They should be attained not easily but with little stretch. The little stretch matters a lot. This makes life very interesting both for your teammate and you.

Follow 

My father was in total control until he was 63. Now, for the past two years is following me. Following is not doing whatever someone asks. Following is also about "not following" when something is wrong. Blind follower follows like a drunkard but a real follower questions every step, validates each move. Once the coaching is done at sufficiently level, it is always good to take an occasional test drive by asking your guy to lead you (and also test the effectiveness of your coaching). Every generation proves that it is more intelligent than the previous one. So, when you follow, be confident and follow. For sure, you will love it and so proud about your guy, a new leader for you.

Compensate

While all the above things are qualitative. As a leader (or an organization), it is your responsibility to compensate people well. At the end of the day (month), pay check is what they can deposit in their bank account. They need money to feed themselves and their loved ones. Never exploit people giving everything but money. Compensation is one of the stickiness factors.

Addendum

Ok. if you ask me whether i do all these, my answer is no but i m trying :-). Transformation is not a choice. The choice is whether you are going to do it or someone else. This is not an effort to become self proclaimed leader. I dedicate this to people who are trying to transform me.

Immature Managers - Reality With (lot of) Humor

Sometime back, there was new performance and career management initiative rolled out in one of the top IT services company in India. The management thought that they could institutionalize the new initiative during recession and they started implementing it. I would say that was a very bold and bright thinking from the part of the organization. We promote people who bring in results and we generally don't focus on experience or maturity part when promoting people. We promote people rather ruthlessly and without any basics thinking. Finally, we run entire organization to tinker them.

The idea of giving promotion in many organization is to just make most of the people happy in some way. Promotion is one of the ways. There is an ice cream seller goes on selling ice cream in a street. A kid, on seeing the seller, wants to buy one not knowing the effects of ice cream and his last week's viral fever. The mom says, "I will take to movie next Sunday". The kid keeps quiet. But giving promotion ruthlessly will have a serious effect on the growth of the organization. The guys who do not have basic human touch or  demeanor makes his team miserable. Either people run away out of frustration or it leads to mediocrity  through "suck up leadership". This is how a class b guy goes on to create class z guy. One of my friends tweeted this video. This summarize the reality but with good humor. Enjoy this video and think at the end :-)

Multiply Your Money - Systematic Investment Plans

Money is not biggest thing in life but it is reasonably close to oxygen. And there is nothing wrong in trying to maximize your corpus. With the rising inflation and real estate reaching unrealistic limits, I always feel that I m left behind. I m not so sure what will my lifestyle and what kind of lifestyle I can afford when I retire. With my little experience in investing, I feel that we have few options like NSC, PPF, Fixed Deposits, Stocks, Real Estate, Mutual Funds and life insurance.

I am very big fan of Systematic Investment Plans because of the idea of discipline. A portion of your salary goes to stock market every month. If you ask any successful investor, he will tell you that the key to investing is discipline and investing in small chucks periodically. The simple reason why "periodic small chuck investing" works is that we buy when market is low, we also buy when the market is high and we sell when the market is higher. I have strong belief that a periodic investment (every month) of few thousands for 15-20 years in stock market gives 5-10 times the returns from fixed deposit. But there is so risk but the risk can be diversified or reduced by investing in different types of mutual funds every month.

To give you a perspective, I started to invest 3-4 years back when the market was high. We all know that market crashed and even now I have a returns between 20-50%. The high return is possible simply because I bought during market crash. If you are serious about building a corpus, I would seriously suggest you to enter into mutual funds every month. The old saying, "little drops make ocean" hold very much for systematic investment plan.

Of course, you need a good financial consultant who does more than collecting money from you. He should be able to give you ideas on investments. Anyone who is having a good portfolio of services in MF and contacts in fund houses is the right candidate. Though, I don't do this as business, I can point you to my financial consultant Mr. Anand Srinivasan if you want. With his help, I am able to build a good corpus even now and I m on track with my targets :-)

Threads Execution - From my Imagination

Having posted general posts for long time, once in a while, a little poor programmer tries to creep out. This is an interview question and so far I haven't heard from anyone any different answer. The key to software development is imagination and trying to add more perspective. The multiple perspective helps us to clearly differentiate and appreciate the depth of the language. With no delay, let me jump into my question. Take a look at the following code and tell me what happens.

public class Threads extends Thread {
   
    public void run() {
        // do some serious thing
    }
   
    public static void main (String[] args) {
        Threads t = new Threads();
        t.start();
        t.start();   
    }
}

If you recognized that we create a thread, execute it twice and it will lead to IllegalThreadStateException, you are right. But have you ever imagined why threads cannot be executed twice. Here is my imagination.

Any thread is an independent execution path. You can have many execution paths that are similar in terms of execution and state changes. Let us take an example from real world. We do lot of things in a day like reading, writing, eating, speaking and so on. If we model or think that each activity as thread, though on a given week we may read many times, probably the same book at same speed, each read is different in the context of time. Similarly, in programming, two or many threads appear similar but they are not really similar. Any execution may it be a process or thread, it is illogical to go back in time however you can spawn off new process or thread that does the same thing. Execution cannot be taken back in time (if we take back execution, it is debugging).

Thread has two properties - object and an entity that can be scheduled. The points we discussed above is more on "an entity that can be scheduled". An entity that has completed its run, cannot brought back to execution as its purpose of its creation is over. But from object's perspective, it is data and hence can be accessed and kept for any duration as long as the process is alive.

When you think about thread, remember - "thread has life and object has space". Thread is an object and hence it is given a space in heap, it is available as object till it is garbage collected. But Thread as a entity of execution, it has life. Once its life is over it can be restored again.

Health Advice - Drink Water

For the guys who are in air-condition, try to drink water. If we are in a/c, we don't feel thirsty. So, better proactively drink a lot of water. This year it is going to be terrible hot.

On a lighter note,

Sandy: Chennai has only two climates

Me: What, only two climates..

Sandy, Yes, hot and very hot.

Unlike cricket players, i don't get money for endorsement and don't send income tax officers to my home.

Drop Your Arrogance

There was an interesting tweet, "It is easy to write words and hard to live the words". I often wonder how people think about their people and how quickly they change their stance when they speak out. They often think that their teammates should dance their tune and few will go to any extent of thrashing their ego. While they are doing it, there is always only one thing in their mind, "i must prove to him that i am superior". This is what you call as "arrogance" and if you do it, you stink. When they hold their microphone, on the spot, they become humane. How is that possible?

But the guys who are hearing can spot the double nature and tag you as "arrogant". Arrogance is not in your acoustic level but in your mind, the way you think about your guys. So, be sensible. If you want to make a good connection with your teammate (or anyone), the first thing you got to do is "drop your arrogance" and build a character that is predictable and authentic.

Shortage of Cricket + Surplus of Controversies = IPL

Cricketers + Actors + Business Guys + Politicians + Media -> Little Cricket + Lot of Entertainment + Abundance of Controversies.

I really don't understand why many of us did not oppose IPL-3 fixtures. They started the tournament when there were exams. Close to two months of continuous cricket on an average of 8 hours of cricket per day is way too much of overdose even for the cricket lovers.

IPL has become an organized gambling in which business guys, media and cricketers (including players of the past) make a lot of money from people. Irrespective of what they say and what we think, these days controversies and cricket have become synonymous. IPL is for sure has less cricket and more controversies.

My only question is "Will IPL survive". If yes, "how long".

Bye, bye IPL.

Indian IT Industry - Be Sensible

I sit in interviews (of course, as an interviewer) and confidently say that we are ruthless. Most of the candidates say that they have multiple offers and they want to decide "finally". I know for sure that only small number of people are looking for learning and environment. Most of them use "money" to decide finally. But their decision was taken even before they started the job hunt which was settling in a company that offered more. A guy earns handsome in a company and he moves to another company with a minimum of 40%. IT industry is ruthless and senseless. The whole spectrum has become insensible, unsustainable, greedy and complacent.

With this rate of salary hike and job hunts, Indian IT industry becomes quite uncompetitive. I m not against hikes or salary revision. But my question is "how much". I don't know if someone deserves 20% hike every year and at the end of few years 40-60% in the form of job switch. So, every five years, the salary gets doubled. While I had a discussion with one of my friend/colleague who is heading a division, he accepts that we are ruthless and sees heavy competition from Russia, Ukraine and Thailand (many countries are at their tipping point). Either they do more getting same money or they do same at a much lower price. This shows that Indian workforce is becoming uncompetitive and unattractive.

So, this is right time for the top guys who are leading the industry to stop being selfish. Else, Indian IT industry, the TCSs, Wipros, Infosyss, HCLs will become history.

Software Design - Puzzle #2

Here goes another design puzzle.

There are varieties of creatures (example Man, Lion, Tiger, Monkey) each exhibiting varieties of walking behaviors (Walk, Slow Walk, Chasing, Running, Jumping). The walking behavior changes based on the mood of the creatures. (Hint: This forces us to bring in different walking behaviors to our objects dynamically).

Can you analyze this requirement and come up with design pattern(s) that could solve this problem and set of classes to model this requirement.

Pass on the Ball (blame)

A few days back, my teammate and I went to a hotel near to my office. We ordered Bournvita (it is drink made out of milk, sugar and cocoa) for us. The waiter brought Bournvita to our table. Without caring too much on the color of the drink, I sipped a bit. It was then, I realized that there is no Bournvita (may be a little) or sugar. It was just milk. My teammate too tasted it and said that it neither looked nor tasted like Bournvita. We called the waiter again. He said the master (one who prepares bournvita) is new and he didn't know to make Bournvita. It was horrible to hear because making bournvita is not a rocket science. The waiter was trying to pass on the blame to someone who was not in the scene. We didn't care who made it. There is no wonder why he did that because the hotel has a very good reputation for being greedy that offers less for more. As a customer, I felt how it pains to be at receiving end of mediocre customer service.

If there is one thing that I must do is "stop passing on the blame ball" and "try to face the ball". When you do that, the people loves you.

How to Trade Stocks

This is just a speculation and not proven theory. I m seeing some trend quite consistently and based on my theory (yet to be verified)

Buy stocks on Monday/Tuesday. Sell it on Thursday evening or Friday Morning. Market will certainly go down on Friday afternoon. (take care in case Friday is holiday). This gives you some quick bucks.

I advise readers to trade at their own risk and this applies only in Indian stock exchanges (NSE/BSE). Hope, many of you know that I m not a qualified stock analyst :-)

But if you made some bucks, you have to strictly give me some royalty.

Producing Leaders Vs Producing Business

I had a view that the organizations should produce leaders to win in business. Now, I feel that it is the other way. The business (or need) produces the leaders. I m not talking about building one's leadership qualities. I m talking about the need of leaders to drive business goals. When you have business, you will have a support system or a cushion for people to be always at peak of their performance (meeting business goals) and the mistakes are quite fine when you are at your peak performance. When the people are at their peak performance, they naturally become stars. So, producing leaders (or rather business leaders) starts with producing more business. If you have more project managers (or more seniors), you need to have more projects.

If you ask me, which takes precedence, I would say "producing business" makes bigger sense than "producing leaders".

Killing of Jawans by Maoist and Ministers Reaction

This is the recent development and only national news channels are telecasting it continuously. As usual the channels in Tamilnadu are talking about either CM's by-election victory or Amma's Aarpattam. There are around 74 jawans killed when at least 1000 Maoist started to attack jawans. Many of the jawans are missing. Our heartfelt salutes for jawans who lost life and condolences for their family.

On hearing this, like a general public, our home minister was shocked. On hearing him saying that he was shocked, I was shocked. Because a couple of days back our home minister gave an ultimatum to Maoist while he was visiting West Bengal. What the government is going to do is a still a big million dollar question.

Medicine or Poison - Let us Wake Up

This news is there for a while and for most of us it is just a news. We don't go medical shop that frequently and there is every possibility that we get good medicine even if we go or very least we can think that we will get medicines that are perfect to cure diseases. Few months back, I heard an interview from a government health officer in radio (FM) and he promised that there are no incidences of selling fake or expired medicine. He said that the medicines given in government hospitals had very strict quality control. But it seemed genuine when he accepted that there were few isolated cases but that could not be generalized.

Recently, there was a big scam or rather a cruelty brought into light. It was shocking to hear about a single person involved in selling of expired and contaminated medicines. He used to involve in an activity of collecting drugs from garbage (that were thrown out by people) and sold it to shops like a drug distributor. Should we believe that this is done by a single person? How can the collection, packaging, distribution and selling of expired medicine of such massive scale be done by single person without any help from others? The magnitude is so big and revenue picks to few hundred crores. 

Just few minutes back, I heard someone in drug distribution (I bet he must be a President or in similar post) to talk about medicine. His statement was too general to believe. He says that the medicine loses weight after expiry date and loses it power or curing capabilities. He says that it will not cause death. Another one says that the people should buy medicines in full strips so that the expiry dates printed in the strip is not cut away and clearly visible. For sure, these creatures are better to be magicians. The guys who sell medicine on the road side ("legiyam vickaravan") are much better than these creatures. I don't want to ask them whether they will give this medicine to their loved ones or for that matter will they go and buy the entire strip when they just need two tablets. This shows that how irresponsible they are and I quite related to Mr. Subroto Bagchi's example of a doctor who sold kidneys and later to fled to Nepal. This is pure impurity - the lack of integrity and the lack of professionalism.

But I m sure that the guy involved in this scam will also get bail in few months and lead a peaceful life. At maximum he will be fined few lakhs, the bank account and property in his name will be seized (but his wife's, son's, friend's, relatives' and dogs' account will not be seized) and few police officers will get promotion, the chief minister will appreciate the police department (and himself) for being proactive.

But who is responsible for betraying the people who did not get a chance to go to medical college (or any school) and ended up swallowing the poison?

Again Mr. Subroto Bagchi - "The Professional"

Having been a professional for past eight years, I was bit late to understand who a professional is? It is better late than never. It is again Mr. Subroto Bagchi with his classical writing on a very complex topic without a pinch of overdose. The book has little more than 200 pages and it talks about the characteristics of a true professional. The book has seven parts - Integrity, Self Awareness, Professional Qualities, Managing Volume, Managing Complexity, New World Imperatives, The Professional's Professional and finally a short write up on "The Unprofessional".

The whole of book is nicely written with deeper insights There are many anecdotes from Mr. Bagchi's work life. The portions on the topic "Integrity" and the story of Mahadeva is inspiring and it gives me courage to keep up my integrity. This is my second reading of the books my Mr. Bagchi and the previous one was "Go Kiss The World".After reading the book, I understand what it takes to be a true professional and the missing pieces in me. I urge you to read the book "The Professional" at least once. When you retire, you will leave a legacy at your work place.

The Professional (Buy from Flipkart.com in India)

Adversity - How to Face It?

Neither my mom nor my dad had decent luxuries in their early lives. Both of them were born in a big family that struggled to meet both ends meet especially my mom's and aunt's/uncle's lives were nothing but adversity. When we (my sisters and myself) were young, our hobby was to hear my mom's early life. She used to explain us how they traveled by barefoot to her schools and how my uncles studied their diploma/colleges. When I was too young, I used to hear the story very with involvement. The involvement was just to get entertainment and pass time before my sleep. But later, as I grow up (still many of my friends shout at me when I say I m growing up :-) ), I started to listen to her on how the brothers and sisters missed a meal per day but yet how they stood by a core values.

My grandmother, an angel, in my role model. When she did not have food to feed her children, she fed her children with core/human values. I used to think, how come is it possible for a family to have such an wonderful value system. Now, I realize that it came from my grandmother. Being an orthodox family (and not well to do), it is really difficult to stand by core values. But yet they did. Awesome.

How did they face it? Whether to give control to the time thinking that everything will be taken care of? Or Is it fine to handle or workaround the situation to silently pledge the core/human values? Or to blame God who you think deaf when you always run into problems? I never heard them doing something wrong or talking bad about God for their hardship. When I try to understand what made them to stand on their values, it is love towards the family, the hope that things will fall on its plate pretty soon  and to work on the little they had in their hands and unprecedented passion towards "being human". Even when they are well off today, I find them modest and practicing the core/human values. Love, Hope and Passion are key ingredients to sail through hardship.

Push The Thinking Horizon

It was 12pm. I dialed the number in my mobile. I could really feel how distant Hyderabad is. It was Naveen who attended HCL interview in Hyderabad, a couple of weeks back. Impressed with his performance in interview, I was following up with him whether he joins us. As soon as he lifted his phone, he said, "Hey, Lakshmi", how are you doing?" and suddenly his voice went down. He told me, "Lakshmi, I asked my parents whether I can join HCL, Chennai". They said, "no". He went on to say, "I miss HCL" (so am I :-)). He said another thing that was shocking to me. He said, "you are the best person I met. I want to join HCL simply because you. Now, I cannot join but in future I will join". For sure, I will see this guy becoming terrific.

What did I do to be seen as best person other than interviewing him for more than four hours and thirty minutes of orientation post interview. On the interview day, I was just trying to bring out best out of him. I saw his eyes go bright on seeing his answers and when I try to put his answers into a perspective of problem solving.

The people love you when you make them super star, when you make them to stretch their thinking horizon, when you make them to do something different from their usual mundane work.