Upskilling is the mantra

The future needs a functional guy – someone who sees the customer and her pains.

DevOps is more than set of tools, a framework to add business value and reduce customer pain. Someone who can respond to pain like a doctor in emergency not just taking a note of the situation.

Cloud developer is not just a developer. The fast paced world needs him to be everything. He needs to be “Agile” – groom his stories, make an initiative to understand the business requirements, develop them into a piece of functionality, test them, automate them so that it cries when something is broken, document everything that needs to be and act on the feedback. Be a positive feedback machine.

I don’t want to be a dev guy and I don’t want to be a test/automate. There is no space for someone who wants to sit in dev or test and just do what he is skilled at. The newer world needs someone who gets excited to jump on the unknown and gets the hands dirty and quickly build expertise (just what is needed).

Overall, an outcome based, customer focused tribe capable of scaling horizontally and vertically over a period of time.

Upskill is more of mindset than a skillset

So, Upskilling is the mantra

Play your strength

I got the messages in Facebook. It summarizes what we should be doing - "play your strength" and "measure the performance when playing the strength"

How much we rely on the performance appraisal system (outsourcing our career) and how much we are ensuring that we are playing our strength (creating our future).

Thinking

How much ever i try to think, i cannot think.

Despite that i continue to think that i can think well one day (hope is eternal, remote possibility but there is hope)

Notion of Role

I often hear from people about wanting an elevation in the role thinking that mere elevation would give us a career progression. The career progression is a sword and ultimately lead to suicide when there are no business need and an undue promotion (a different topic).

Let us dwell right into the "notion of role".

Unlike a drama or cinema, the role at work need not be restricted. The role is something what i believe that i would be doing (aspiration), what i should be doing (expectation), whether it pushes my abilities (performance) and whether i really like what i am doing (passion). 

Each one of us can aspire to become something. It doesn't mean that it is available right now. The second thing - the reality might be quite different from belief. I might believe that i am something and ready for something more. The reality could be different and there could be gaps. I might need to work on the gaps, be flexible to play better (efficient, try to solve the team's problem and create impact).

But to start with I feel it is very important to be flexible to contribute more. Flexibility (mindset or paradigm whatever you call it) could be a real game changer. The moment i become flexible, i really tune my antenna of learning and slowly expand my capacity which is very likely to give a career progression and role progression. There is a possibility of becoming a role MODEL.

Appraisal - The horror Movie

Some thoughts on appraisal and events around it (most of these can be applied every day) and how to cope up with the depression/disappointment.

Goals & Results

If you don't have a goal, don't ever think of a meaningful discussion. A goal with a consistent result is very important before any discussion. Many people think that the goals can derived from their job profile but then the real ambiguity comes in when the discussion happens over the results. Avoid using % when you talk about your consistency. Bring out specific instances that made you happy and write about instances where you thought you are stretching your limits of thinking and ability. If you have taken any specific initiative, even if it is small but not usually expected at your level, talk about it and list down your learning. That is sure way of opening the discussion.

When you are writing your results, be sure to do self-introspection. What do you think about your result. Did you achieve what you wanted to achieve or do you think that there can be improvements in the way your are working. It conveys to people who review your performance to think that you are doing your bit and spending time with you will be more meaningful.

See the future

Seeing the future is not about when you will be promoted :-). Often we don't indulge to visualize the future. Sometimes, seeing through future gives us stress as the future may seem so uncertain. The uncertainty is more as you grow. As you grow, your growth really depends on how you embrace the events and the events are products of many people/events. If you handle it gracefully, probably the people watching it will be able to give your an honest feedback. If you try to handle it gracefully and if you cannot handle due to lack of knowledge or skill or exposure, the folks may mentor you. But if you don't want to handle gracefully or if you don't like to absorb the uncertainty (if you prefer to be in comfort zone), you don't deserve to grow. Seeing through the future and ready to absorb the uncertainty is an important trait. Talk about how you see your future and paint a picture of where you are going to see yourself by next year. Tell the appraiser what you will do when you are about to face failure and how you will mitigate it.

Grow - vertically and horizontally

We often have a fragmented view on growth. We always see growth to be vertical. But the growth can also be horizontal. Trying to do something which you have not done but little closer to your current job is the way to start. When you contribute horizontally, people appreciate it and often translate into a vertical growth. Ponder about your horizontal growth and ask questions on where you can contribute. The questions like these cannot be left unanswered by an appraiser.

Not understanding the environment

If you bring a value, first observe whether the folks are experiencing it. If they don't experience, the point is loud and clear. Your value is a hype or at very least you are trying to overemphasis your value. Since the workplace has so many folks, it is very important that you benchmark yourself with overall organization. Failure to do so leads to what i call suicide - underestimation. Underestimating the expectations and underestimating your peers is a very sick way of trying to increase your value. Another important red flag that i call as "slow death" is thinking that whatever we are doing is just fine to be in top league.  This is slow death because it leads slow degradation and mediocrity (becomes a habit). Reaching to the top or falling to the bottom cannot have overnight. When you are on the way to mediocrity, the first thing that you will do is failing to sense what is going on.

Lack of initiation and not interesting to know the real feedback

If you lack initiation on knowing about you, this by itself is sufficient for mediocrity. The initiation and natural interest on how you have been seen is an important thing. This often interrelated to above points. If you have goals and performed well, you will have something interesting to talk about. So, be sure to take initiative in understanding how others see you.

Fear of underrating leading to overrating of self

Don't fear that a honest self appraisal and self rating will lead to lower rating. A thorough review will give you the strategies about your near future and the final rating depends not only on how you perform but also on how others performed. An open mind will always willing to see who did well and possibly learn from her. Don't ever overrate yourself.

Talk about what organization needs

At some point of time in your discussion, be sure to talk about what organization needs. How do you see the organization and how it can be improved. Question the status quo. While nothing can be changed in single discussion, people will understand your achievements and your urge to improve the organization. People will also understand the obstacles and how you overcame that. It could be very well be a starting point of a change.

Your improvement is organization's value addition

And finally, it is very true to that your improvement is organization value addition. If you continue to be where you are, i believe it is point of suicide. Even a little baby step helps. So, don't think that appraisal is mere ritual. If it is done properly, it will fuel your growth and can completely redefine you.

Fielding the dejection/disappointment

This is very important characteristic. If you are not happy with the end results of appraisal, you may be depressed. At this stage, having a conversation with the guy who appraised you makes sense or you can reach out to human resources. Until your depression goes away, the best thing you can do is avoiding degradation of your attitude/work. If you allow degradation (particularly the attitude), it may even sound that whatever verdict that has been given is correct. The best thing is trying to make the next appraisal eventful (may be it will be hard to digest but then it has to be absorbed. Let us be practical). If you experiencing this depression consistently over the years, the time has come to become graceful (think of finding solace elsewhere, the world is too big and certainly you have a space in it).

A lot of these things can be acted upon through the year, so why you wait till appraisal and most of it in the hands of the appraiser :-)

For folks whose appraisal are due, best of luck :-)

Community And Company

You can run a company for profitability. You can see products/services as something that are getting assembled and you sell those for a margin. There is nothing wrong in it (and equally there isn't anything great either). If you really want to exist, you just keep making profits.

Not good enough these days and not enough any day when you want to make meaning.

You run a company plus run communities.

Communities where people learn how they assemble products and deliver services. They do bold experiments and your company becomes nothing less than a laboratory. They stretch their brain muscle, elevate their thinking and ready to make BIG mistakes.

Open source is a great example. There are many open source products where no one claims ownership but make their contributions count. The success of open source product paves way for great success in future and failures become lessons.

Communities are great way when you want build something ground up. Communities lead to paradigm shift.

Communities inside the company should be the foundation for your company (not just profits).

I wish i could be wisest

I wish i could be wisest, but until i become one (remote possibility), i prefer to be foolish.

I wish i could behave like a grown-up, but until it comes naturally to me, i prefer to be like a child.

I wish i could write little better (particularly my posts here), i can just copy here, copy there and sound like a thinker. I wanted to be original but not a photocopy. Until it comes naturally to me, i prefer to stay foolish & half-baked.


But the point is, i like to be looked at as a fool and i feel so proud to be such a fool.

2011 - Looking back & Looking forward

I never intended to write something describing what i did the past year. But a quick thought arose now. I have two things to share that i feel so happy about it. One that happened at work and another in life (i should say internet life, as each of us have two personal lives - one in internet and another ordinary/common life :-))

By the starting of 2011, i took up something at work and i feel that though it is not super hit, i realized that i m playing the game to my strengths. All the situations thought me that i should always be level headed. Sometimes, i felt the situations are custom crafted to make by temper to reach its tipping point. Unlike my usual thing, i somehow played by emotions low. Towards the end of the year, i really liked the way i handled things. I only hope that i should improve from here. It was an year of low profile and great learning (particularly the time i spent with fresh professionals just out of college).

Next, let me talk my internet life. When you want to know about something, i think usually we hit Google and most likely the first link would be LinkedIn and Facebook (if you are searching for people) and Wikipedia if you are looking for informative articles. Wikipedia is beyond Encyclopedia and it gives us authentic information. This year i contributed towards Wikipedia fund to keep it for free and i m looking forward to next year (and hopefully, i m planning to double my contributions). When you have a great place to look for information and when the people wiser than you writing/building it, it makes sense to contribute and it is wonderful feeling being part such an initiative.

For the next year, i think i should blog more (with interesting topics) and do something that makes me feel that i m constantly stretching my limits.

I constantly think about this blog and my readers who constantly make me better everyday and each time i blog.

For all the wonderful readers, wishing you a very happy new year. I m looking forward for the new year to learn more. Together, let us learn more.

Puzzle - Help the Painter

Your friend is a painter and he paints houses for quite sometime. He is highly professional and highly sought after as he known for his quality work and fair painting charges. Throughout his life he has painted lot of houses that are regular sizes - rectangles, squares and circles. He charges his customer based on the area he paints. (you see calculating area for regular shapes is cake for him)

Last week, a new potential customer called him up for a huge order that will keep him and his team busy for next five to seven months. The catch here is that the customer is not willing to pay a penny more and even your friend being a professional painter wants to quote a fair pricing strategy to his new potential customer to win this order. BTW, did i tell you that the area to be painted are irregular shapes.

The painting area is

• Irregularly shaped like amoeba
• Each surface is uniquely shaped (bare minimum he needs to paint 1000 such surface different in 1000 ways)

What is the pricing strategy that your friend can offer to his customer so that both your friend and his customer is happy.