Be your own case study

Reading books gives knowledge. But mere knowledge does not guarantee behaviors. All behaviors do not yield experience. All experiences do not give wisdom.

But it all starts with being theoretical (reading books). Read books and "do" something with the learning. Be your own case study - conduct experiments and create positive feedback.

After definite amount of work, there comes a masterpiece - hidden gem inside you that gets polished with every effort you make.

My "rational" tells to my "emotional" self when i am not yet there.

New Year Resolution - Does it make sense?

Retrospection, questions and answers

1. Have you ever taken a resolution on new year eve? 
• Mostly yes. I often take every year since i became professional. Sometimes i share it with others and sometimes i do not share with others reason being "fearing failure". It looks like the goals should not to be made public.
2. Have you ever successfully able to keep up the commitment to yourself? 
• Yes for initial days/weeks and then it fades away. After few months, i hardly remember the resolution unless someone remind me
3. What is the motivation behind your resolution?

• I want to lead a better life. I think everyone has every right to be better and be happier. When i take resolution, it always give me a fresh thought and a fresh start. I feel that i can erase all the past and give my life a fresh start. I understand that it need not be a new year. But then it is a nice way to start a year so that we can review it mid way through the year.
4. How does it feel when you have given up resolution?
• It feels very hard. Though i smile, i really takes a toll on my self-confidence. I feel like i am an excellent starter & planner but a poor finisher.
5. What do you think is root cause of failing in resolution?
• There is no single answer. It is lack of experience, lack of ability to split the goals into minor critical accomplishments, lack of prioritization, lack of ability to connect emotional with the goal (Elephant), lack of understanding of tiny improvements & small wins, lack of commitment.
6. Is it still relevant?
• Yes, i do think that i am going to have very few resolutions.
7. How do you think that you will be different this year?
1. I need to think a lot. 
2. I should marry my long term goals to shorter term wins (Rider, Elephant). I should focus on one month at a time than a year (a lot of things can happen in a year but shorter periods are almost certain)
3. Focus should be on Health, Happiness and Skill building than making money.
4. Approach this more psychologically by forming habits rather than seeing this as end points. (For example losing 30 pounds should directly related to walking. Unless i form walking as a habit, i cannot lose 30 pounds.)
5. Whatever it is, i should share my progress with others.

Paradigm shift

Human beings are designed to thrive and evolve. Most of us think that we have limitations. It is our own thinking that is causing us stagnated. But we are limitless possibility. Here is a video that someone shared in Facebook.

Inspiring Story

Whatever we do might be a very simple like fixing a puncture in a cycle. But it might have given us a new thinking, new eyes, new possibilities. If it gives us a new perspective, even a tiny thing is a paradigm shift. New perspective gives us limitless possibilities.

Perspectives are important as they fetch shift in frame of mind.

Happy weekend

Philosophy of Being Naughty

Any philosophy to be called as a philosophy should primarily have two attributes. It should withstand the test of time and there should have been enough counter perspectives [contrarian views]. If you accept something simply because it has been rolled out by the CEO, you will do more harm to the philosophy than good. If you don't rebel, there are two possibilities. The philosophy could be so great but you missed to understand it. The second possibility is that the philosophy could actually be crap but you would be wasting your time on something which is useless. So, when in doubt, question. When in doubt, do not co-operate. When in doubt, be naughty.

In some cases, obedience is height suicide. Disobedience can lead to great self satisfaction and most productive for the company. This point itself could be a philosophy. Philosophy of being naughty (by naughty i mean not taking the casual route, naughty could be not fearing, naughty could be not trusting until there is a proof, naughty could be trying to be rebel).

By being naughty, if you don't buy in to the philosophy, it just fine. Because, you follow "Naughty Philosophy"

What is Experience

Yesterday, Sandeep and I had a long discussion on "what is experience". Here is what we came up with.

We start our career with equal potential. Experience is how we mobilize our potential. It is how we convert our potential (the energy we posses by virtue of being human, engineer etc) to action (how we mobilize the potential to get results) decides the depth of our experience. The conversion factor differs and so is over experience/learning. Experience obeys law of conservation of energy. The energy neither be created nor destroyed but transformed from one form to another form.

In general, potential diminishes as experience grows and kinetic increases with experience (for most of us). We become more action oriented with experience.

We came up with the following diagram during our chat.

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.

Will Mr. Subroto Bagchi Nurture My Thinking?

Yes, I think so. He has already started to transform me. He already answered my purpose.

Thank you Mr. Subroto Bagchi. My reading was always at surface level. Now, you have started to penetrate deep into my mind with your fantastic writing of "Go Kiss The World" and "The Professional".

All I can say now is

Second Opportunity - It's a Sunshine

As you get more experience, it is highly likely that you lead a team. How many of us give this second opportunity to others? Why are we jumping into conclusion and be judgmental when things happen for the first time? Why we judge others based on what they deliver though they are trying things for the first time?
Giving an opportunity for someone who desperately needs an entry is big thing. But giving second opportunity to someone who failed is a biggest thing. When you give that second opportunity, he will remember you forever and will have a huge respect for you. It happened to me sometime back.

I don't need to tell you about the job market during the recent recession and how IT companies suffered. I was given a job of staffing up two teams at work and the job involved interviewing internal candidates who were ready for deployment. I happened to meet a young chap whom I heard of due to his social service activities. Seems like that was not his day. After the discussion, I told him that I was not satisfied with his performance in the discussion. I asked him whether he was willing to take another shot on the day that was convenient to him but after some preparation. He said, "yes". I was expecting that he would call me back but that didn't happen. It is good that he didn't call me.

Recently, I was visiting US for a short business trip and I saw a scrap in my orkut from the very same chap. He said, "thank you for giving me second opportunity . I didn't get a chance to meet you again. After our discussion, I went back and read a lot. Today, I m in US for an onsite assignment". He connected with me in Orkut and LinkedIn. He spoke with a lot of passion and lot of confidence. It seemed that he came to US on his own mileage - his performance. Shortly, he wrote an email to me about his journey that happened after our discussion. I believe, today, he is working for one our elite customers.

If I reflect back, there are many instances in which I was in receiving end. Many people have given me second opportunities to prove myself. Being in the giving end is a great feeling as you enable a person towards self-realization. Also, I m sure that about 99.99999% of people are products of many second chances. If your team completes everything in first chance, you have no role to play. Team needs you only when you give second chance and support them when they fail for first time. Leadership is all about giving second chance with no strings attached.

Have a Great Day and Wonderful week ahead.

I Must Fail

Today, it was a great experience to see someone failing and everyone around her was holding her up. On seeing that I wanted to fail because such a failure was not really a failure. Tonight there was a singing competition in Vijay TV for kids. I think, one kid (a singer) was eliminated. The views of the judges were impressive. The playback singer Mano and Malkudi Subha were the judges. I was quite impressed with the way they handled the situation. Being in the position of judging talent is very tough.

The judges said, looking at the girl who was eliminated, "you came as seed and you are going as a flower, you blossomed here". WoW, what a word? You must see the kid's eyes go bright, her mom's eyes go bright, audiences were smiling like sunshine and the entire arena was awestruck. What a way to give a feedback (on the other side, and in the corporate world, the monkeys that are paid to give feedback deliver it in a pathetic and insensitive way). Both of them rightly pointed out that the girl has transformed in the competition and the girl was trying something extraordinary. I learned two important lessons in my life.

Never shy away from trying extraordinary things.
Never hurt someone who is trying to be extraordinary. Praise her and take her as role model.

In a nutshell, I feel that I must fail because it is fine to be a failure rather than a mediocre success. It is another good night sleep and tonight I feel so much happy on learning important lesson about failure.

I m Writing for Tomorrow

For a simple fact, I know that I m very poor in thinking and writing. Few years back, I was poorer and few more years back probably I was useless. I have grown from useless to poor which is great achievement. I write for tomorrow. When I say I m writing for tomorrow, I mean that I m practicing to be near perfect and I m practicing the art of taking failures and obviously in right sense. I know that I will succeed - one day. Because, I strongly believe that every dog has its day.

When I fall, I never watch others. I used to think that others will laugh at me when I fall and that may probably be true. Those people never looked forward. And the people who look forward they dont laugh but smile with lot of hope simply because they know that I m at a striking distance. Their smile is sunshine.

Yes, I m writing my future with lot of failures. I know, failures are successes.

Have a Great Day

"Under the leadership" Disease - Grow up Guys

Leadership is again one of the most misused words. When someone brings results (even because of luck), we often say "under the leadership" we blah, blah, and more blah. Without understanding the meaning of "leadership", it is very pathetic and painful to see people (or so called leaders) assuming things on their own. I have seen and probably you would have seen many people around you who are just egocentric. The more they say "we", they more you find "I" in their words. Their "we" sound like "I". For them, the word "leadership" is pure material that buys them happiness, money, and promotion. What not.

When I see such people I seriously think that they will change next time. But the next time, they blabber much more (and in fact show excellent improvement in blabbering) about "under the leadership" formula. They fail to understand about leadership. Leadership is about passion, leadership does not know title, leadership does not see who sits in front of you, leadership is about making your people as heroes, leadership is about following when your followers are capable to lead, leadership is about integrity, leadership is about keeping up the words, leadership is about keeping up the time, leadership is about remembering your people when you are about to sleep (every day or forever), leadership is about empowerment, leadership is about listening, leadership is about being charismatic, leadership is about delivering, leadership is about working hard, leadership is about being accountable, leadership is about courage, leadership is about empathy, leadership is about coaching, leadership is about accepting others as they are, leadership is about silence, leadership is about big picture, leadership is minute detail. But surely leadership is not the commodity that you can sell.

Come on guys, grow up. Dont sell leadership for your personal mileage. The world is moving fast towards leadership innovation.

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.

God@Earth - A Puncture Boy

Each one of us can think, write and want to live like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Gautama Buddha. But most of the times, we forget to follow the soul. If we follow our soul, we will find all the great people among us. But unfortunately it takes a lot of time to understand this as we get stuck in details, see, smell and perceive things with poor understanding, and we never get connected with the whole - the soul.

Today, I happen to meet a great guy. I dont know his name, let us call him Mr. Perfect because for me he appeared perfect. He might have been 15-20 years old or may be much younger. He works in a cycle shop in Vadapalani (Chennai, India) and the cycle shop has an extension for fixing the puncture (both bicycle and bikes). Today, it seems like a good day for me and fortunately my bike got punctured (this is a regular phenomenon). I needed to walk at least 500 meters to find this shop.

When I parked my bike, Mr Perfect was fixing puncture of a cycle. He took around 10 minutes to fix it. He was fully focused on his work. There was another elderly person who was working with a bike. I thought that the elder one is going to fix my bike. As I was thinking, Mr Perfect was so fast to fix the cycle and he just smiled at me. Again, he was fully engaged and dedicated towards his work and my God, I never seen a "Puncture Boy" like him (you can believe my words, I have seen my puncture shops in Chennai).

After he finished, he double checked whether he fixed it properly. I m not sure how many of us, the "so called" software engineers do this. He said, "Sir, I ll make sure again, it is almost 9 pm and you will not find any shops if it again goes off". I was stumbled with his customer service, surely, he is "Gung Ho". The point is, he has already worked on 50+ punctures and he never got tired. He didn't take sandwiches, snacks or juices. But, his energy level was pretty high.

Truly, a God at Earth and one of the great leaders I have ever seen. Here is the picture of Mr. Perfect.