GeeksHub

As some of you know that I used to do the mentoring of students to improve their employability at a personal capacity. I thought I should give a formal structure to it as I continue to create impact. We are seeing career transformation and the time is just right.

I am merging my contributions in mentoring through GeeksHub, where I will be serving as an advisor. GeeksHub is an upskilling company primarily targeting entry and mid-level software engineer to improve their hard skills (coding, technology and related). You can find more about them here

I will continue to use this blog for technical/technology discussions and others related to technology. I will refrain posting general stuff related to life (but you never know)

More on GeeksHub in next post :-)

Random Thoughts on "Add Value"

Having been in the industry for quite sometime, i took a lot of time to understand the true meaning of "add value" and practical meaning of "add value". I never shy away from being bold and often share my candid opinion with a caveat that i could be wrong. When i share, i understand my limitations in my own thinking and offer to correct my thinking flaws when an argument is made with evidence. This post need not necessarily my experience at my workplace. This is just a "how the world can be" thinking. 

Many people who manage people use these tricky words - "add value". I think, the statement "add value" is so abstract. Can you make it concrete so that understanding becomes easier? When you go abstract, you become more philosophical. The abstraction has to be an outcome of one's own thinking. It is outcome of your thinking when you play with few concrete things and you understand them. It can and should never be taught. When we say "add value", what do we mean by that? Have we clearly said what is basic expectation and what is value addition. Being in an industry where there is large human churn (due to attrition), being sticking to a company for few years is basic expectation and  serving the company for long years is adding value. can the mere presence be considered as "adding value"?

How will you convince a worker who is so passionate, who maintains a very low profile who thinks that he is doing something what is expected out of her. Here, "adding value" is built in. You cannot differentiate such worker and value. How can you define "add valuing" to such a person? Will you exploit him when she says "she is normal guy".

Why is that adding value never be practiced? When you have so many people under you, it is much easier to make noise, can you step up your contributions through critical thinking? Are you dare enough to say, "come on guys, fire my thought process, let us learn something new, thinking fresh is more important than value itself". You know, being an example takes a lot of pain and we have to endure a lot of pain. The commitment to remain painful is a way to "add value" to your folks. For example, you have endure the pain of no results for many months before seeing something. Are you prepared for it? When your team is in incubation, will you rally around it?

Unless we have such a commitment towards shaking up status quo, we can never be "adding value".

With my little experience, i infer that only rebel can add value in words and spirit and i also believe that the value driven out of such a person will never be visible. Because such a value will lead to paradigm shift.

Being with RIGHT GUY and turning UPSIDE DOWN

Changing the status quo needs a vision. You got to know where you want to go. It is your "point zero".

Only then comes the resources. Most of the times, you just don't commit to a change initiative thinking of resources. Resources are assumed to be available when you need them.

If you are convinced enough that you have to change and facilitate a change, the next important thing is being with RIGHT people. I m not saying you need to be with a visionary. I m just saying that you got to be with someone who sees tomorrow, next month or probably next couple of years. The way he is seeing may not be consistent. But the key is seeing tomorrow.

As long as he sees "some tomorrow", he is the guy and he is going to question you and probably shake things up to make tomorrow little better.

Be with RIGHT guy and turning UPSIDE DOWN would be a wonderful experience. You will simply love being part of such a change.

Organizational Entropy

Entropy (thermodynamics) is the energy that is not available for any useful work. Entropy in software measures the degree to which it is unordered, degree to which it can't be maintained. Entropy in organization measures the degree to which the workforce is unfocused & unordered. Though the field of application is different, by the very definition we understand that entropy is not a thing to boast about. The system continue to go in favor of entropy unless it is taken out in the form of heat.

Entropy in organization implies that energy that is available and that will eventually be spent on matters that is not so useful to the organization either be it taking too much of tea for a prolonged period in cafe or putting up a strategy in a conference with tea (or beer). All these are efforts which won't necessarily be converted to results. The next question that may come you mind - "is entropy same as that of being unproductive?".

Being unproductive is the result of having an entropy at higher side. Productivity is a metric that is measured after the event has happened. You have to wait for a week, a month, a year or until you have next meeting. But entropy measures how much of energy you have and what portion of it will be spent on things that will have little to no impact.

I feel like measure on entropy, and trying to reduce it, is a proactive approach than doing with measuring productivity alone. You better remove entropy periodically. Keeping a check on entropy increases the awareness and anticipation which in turn increases the probability of producing productive work/results.

Either in software or organizations, the entropy has to be worked against.

Related Links

Entropy in Thermodynamics

Entropy in Software

Paradigm Shifts - Function of Potential, Action and Time

Who is responsible for transforming an organization? Is it God, the organization itself, the CEO, the strategy that is penned by business leaders or who else? I don't think neither the God nor the CEO can bring about the change. The God or the CEO can only give you direction and can minimize intrusion. 

Before reading further, i would like you to watch the following video by Prof. C K Prahalad on leadership and my frequently viewed video.

What will you think when you see an egg? Will you think that there is a potential hen which again has the potential of creating billions of hens? Or will you just think about having the breakfast? Assume that a fresher stands before you. What will you think? Will you ever think that he is a potential CEO of your company and create so many transformation? Will you think that the guy who stands before you is manifestation of many paradigm shifts?

Paradigm shift is gradual, it takes time. It is zillions of consistent tiny improvements. All such tiny improvements make a transformation. Transformation is a function (product) of potential, action and time. When any of these is zero, the total transformation will be zero. There won't be any paradigm shifts without potential or action and there is no instant transformation (without time factor).

The guys who undergo transformation should keep an eye/heart on "potential and action" part of transformation and the guys who facilitate the transformation should keep an eye/heart on the "time" factor.

Real Test Of (your) Leadership

One of my colleagues used to say that leading an informal group is bit challenging than leading a team where hierarchy is already put in place. I would go one step further to say that leading an informal group is litmus test for one's leadership skills. What do you mean by informal group? By informal group, i mean that there are no rules set in favor of you and you have deal everything on your own. You have to stretch, bend, set standards, be flexible, listen with one thing in mind - achieving the vision of the informal group.

Unlike in traditional team setup where the lead/manager has naturally rules set in his favor either by organization or by himself, in informal group/initiatives, there are no rules set in favor of you. At every point of time, when you are leading an informal group, you got to make sure that you take consensus from everyone and be as democratic as possible. You got to really use your brain, sharpen your thinking, impress the group and win confidence of the group. Improvement is daily ritual. There is no wonder why my friend said, "leading an informal group is challenging". The work is quite involved, no wishy-washy :-).

In order for a someone to acquire some leadership skills, i feel that it is quite important for him to lead a diverse and informal group. This skill is more relevant in today's context where as more young people join the workforce who ask more questions, who are more inclined towards being democratic, who cannot be bound within a boundary, who cannot work with constraints, it is quite essential for the guys who lead teams to lead like leading an informal group. In an informal group, there are no power centers. The group favors who add value to the group. You cannot win the confidence of group just by words or by past action but got to show that in action every second. Leading an informal group is more about action at present.

So, the real test of leadership starts when you lead informal group.

What do you think?

Leadership 101 - New Journey, Great Aspiration, Absolute Followership

It is always great feeling to follow someone. If that "someone" is very close to you and inspires you daily to do more and in fact make you do more, you need to realize that you are getting ready for a paradigm shift, a transformation, a pleasant storm taking everyone by surprise and you are going to be an absolute soul. A month back, I had a new start at work and life is more exciting than it used to be.

I have a great aspiration of touching at least billion lives directly and indirectly. I aspire to facilitate growth for the people who have potential and fire excel by helping them to mobilize their potential at right time, right pace and right level. I strongly believe that this is going to be a great learning experience for me, not only technically but also managerial and leadership skills. Sometime back, I read the book "Transform your Workplace" by Ken Blanchard. In his book, Ken Blanchard talks about Servant Leadership and inverting the pyramid. I also happen to work in a place that asks people to "invert the pyramid". Next few years is going to be absolute excitement and new learning.

I am really looking forward eagerly for some of teammates to lead me :-) I will keep you posted about my learning.

Open Gyan - An Update

Some of you know that I have started an initiative for the students. Few folks joined with me later to when I started the website and Badhri created a Orkut community. As I promised you in one of the previous posts, I here to give you an update. There are reasons to be happy and finally we have given another dimension to Open Gyan. We have launched a long training program for the students who have at least 2-3 years to complete their degree (BE, MCA, ME, MSc). This program comes from a collective experience of 17 years and we are positive that many more people will join us.

This program is an attempt to help students to improve their experiential learning. If you have any of your friends who are in college, you may want to pass this information to them. The detail of this program be accessed through this link - Open Gyan

Where is education? Is it education Industry?

We are living in the world of commercialization where even relationships are commercialized. Education is no exception. Few years back, I was traveling to Delhi for a conference and fortunate to meet a senior person. Since Chennai to Delhi travel time is two and half hours, I wasn't sure about how to spend time. Fortunately, I happen to sit next to a senior person who is Engineer by profession but retired from service.

He was talking about present education system and commercialization of education. He felt that even the educated were falling in the trap of education industry business magnets. He said that the real education did not happen in classroom and the real education for the student was to connect the dots - ability to know the unknown through known. He said that the students of those days suffered from poor exposure and even these days it didn't improve. It is through exposure and constant practice one can become a perfect engineer. He was suggesting me that I should contribute more the society and share my knowledge with others.

Our journey ended when the flight landed in Delhi airport and he wished me for my talk that afternoon and blessed me. I cannot forget the travel and it comes to my mind today because I m so excited to architect a prolonged training for students from computers background to make them employable. I am going to put all my seven and odd years of experience in this initiative. I am going to do this through Internet with the help of web applications. I ll keep you posted and you can expect a post in a month.

Leadership 101 - Look Inwards

This is post can be tagged by many words - experience, confession, realization and outcome of pure hard work. Of late and after reading many books and discussing with many of my friends who are trying to make a difference and add meaning to themselves and this world. My professional experience of first six and half years is simple to summarize "I looked outwards and I failed". I was literally looking things that are materialistic and often liked by others. I was driven by lust towards accomplishment. This last half year is full of learning and learning beyond horizon. I started to look inwards and things that interests me. There are lot of questions pop out of my mind - most of them are discarded immediately, few of them are discarded after a while and I retain few things. For example, in past few months you would have found few discontinuous posts. I would have promised you that I will post something continuously but failed. These are things that I felt interesting and later realized that are not so interesting and dropped those.

But this experience has given me the required guts to take up things that I like and in the process I started to look inwards. Looking inwards (to one's self) will do a miracle and it is when one understands one's own potential. On a contrary to looking outwards which is supposed to exciting, looking inwards will be thought agnostic and thought provoking. As one of my friends said that looking inwards will generally be a slow start and then suddenly at one point of time it will lead to an avalanche effect. Look Inwards is one of the priceless lessons I learned from my friends.

Leadership 101 - Write Test Everyday

One of the priceless lessons I learned from my father is "write test everyday". My father is a teacher. He retried from his paid work but continues his work for free to local students here in Chennai. He was a Sanskrit Pandit at Villupuram. I don't remember the year exactly but it was the time when I was in school and I was complaining about school exams. I said to my father that these teachers were killing me with exams and progress cards.

Being a teacher himself, he said that the students' life is relatively stress free because they write once in a quarter or once in a month. But a teacher writes exams everyday when he stands before his students to impart the lessons in text books and the lessons of life. But generally, the teachers never feel the pressure because they do it out of passion. But eventually they write test everyday. The teacher does the home work and remains open when he delivers his lecture. When you have the attitude of "writing test everyday", you will never take a job without understanding and planning. Once you do that, you job is almost over.

Leadership 101 - Don't Negotiate with your Team

Many of us use negotiation at wrong places and one such place is negotiation in teams. Don't negotiate anything with anyone in your team to build trust. "If you give this, I will give that" will not work in team building. Negotiation is sick when it comes to team. Never try to build trust by negotiation. It is the language that will not work in a long term. While it may give momentary successes which are often fake, it does not have steam to give long term and sustained successes.

The successes and team can be built due to trust and never decreasing and ever increasing trust between the team members. If you negotiate with the team, it breaks the bond of trust. Once you have done it few times, it is very difficult to come out of the negotiation mode to mutual trust mode because you then need to build the trust again from the scratch (this negotiation also changes your subconscious mind to be cunning and tactical). If "negotiation" is your mode of communication, stop it and look for authentic "trust model" to communicate with your team. Then you will realize the "soul" in the team.

Leadership 101 - Potential is Great but Kinetic is Greatest

If you heard about S.V. Shekar (multi-facet person, hero, comedian, politician with dignity), you should probably heard this one.

Character 1: What was your ambition when you were young?
Character 2: Like my father, I too wanted to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and a teacher.
Character 1: Oh great. Is your father a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and a teacher.
Character 2: No, he too wanted to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and a teacher
Character 1: Thinking of committing suicide :-(

If you see, in real world, there is no difference between "character 1" and us. We think that we have great potential but the world measures us with the action we do, the results we produce and the impact we make. There is a big dam with full of water. You cannot harvest the crops without letting the water flow into your field. You need to open it and allow water it move. Dam has a potential to give irrigation to thousands and thousands of acres of land. But it is of no use, if you don't open it.

I agree that unless you have water you cannot irrigate the land. The potential is an entry criteria to make an impact. In order to be useful, you need to convert your thoughts to action. So, potential is great but kinetic is greatest.

Leadership 101 - Can ATM be a Leader?

The era of old (and old age) management and leadership is eroding. If you deny that you will be eroded along with old management styles. So far, we lived in the era of making money and most of the successes of corporations are upheld with single digit and sometimes double digit money matra - profit, revenue. Often, the people are called resources and head counts. But we are not far away from the world of oneness and mutual respect.

One of the key points that was discussed in "The Moonshots to Management" was that the power will go to people who add value and power will be yanked from people who do not add value and by the way, "The Moonshots to Management" was an article focusing management innovation from top notch professors and business leaders. Many people like Ken Blanchard have spoken about Inverting the Pyramid. If you haven't inverted it yet, do it now before you get buried when the pyramid inverts itself. The key differentiators in future centuries will be your people.

If you see "profit" is sufficient criteria for taking up leadership position, then an ATM that dispenses cash can be a great leader. Ask yourself what you have done for the people that you are representing and you privileged to lead. Have a time slot in your day (at least all working days) to think about your people and how you can transform them. Profit is fine for business but transformation is beyond business. Be sensible before it is too late. People will be proud to follow you. Period.

Leadership 101 - Consistency is Key

When we were kids my father gave us (to my younger sister and me) a small container which we used to save daily pocket money. My mom used to give us 25 paisa and I remember in few months we were able to save 10-20 rupees. There is another instance. My father was a bread winner to whole of my family (including my grandma who was living in a village). Out of little money what my father used to give her monthly, she saved 1000 bucks (she might have saved for years) and deposited in a local bank in my name. She was an example of being consistent. Before I became fully aware of this, I loved her, later I loved her and respected her discipline.

Generally we don't care when someone advices about tiny improvements. Being the young blood, we just focus on big things. We ultimately focus on "big things" and lose focus on actual process. But the people who are experienced and matured will focus on tiny and important things. I learned the paramount importance of being consistent from my previous Project Leader - Mr. RK Raja. He is man of consistency and he pushed me towards consistency. My CEO Mr. Vineet Nayar, in one of his yearly meetings talked about rain drops and how the rain drops make an ocean.

When you want to dig 100 feet deep, you need dig 1 feet 100 times consistently. If you dig 25 feet three times or 50 feet one time, it isn't sufficient. Consistency is the key to transformation.

Be a follower, then a leader is a possibility

Many of us (I should say most of us) are both leader and follower in everyday life - may it be at work or personal life. At work, we are boss and subordinate to someone and in personal life same is the case. So, we cannot shy away either from leadership or being follower. In order to be at best in both leadership and follower role, we need to understand the factor that connects both leader and follower.

A bad follower cannot be a good leader. Let us say it again - A bad follower cannot be a good leader but can be a good manager. The leader and follower relationship is two way lane. First, the leader should be highly self motivated, highly intellect and give respect to his follower. When a follower has such leader, first he respects his leader, then loves him and finally draws inspiration from his leader. From respect to drawing inspiration is a gradual, study and time consuming process. When the follower reaches a point, then the follower becomes a leader. A follower needs to spend at least one cycle of respecting his leader, loves his leader and having him as a source of inspiration to become a leader.

So, the leadership starts at being a faithful, honest and great follower.

Get the basics right - Fix the root cause, not symptoms

Some say, "We are following world class processes to deliver software with quality and in time". Is it the processes that deliver software? Isn't it people? When you want to deliver great software, you got to have great people or at bare minimum you should make great people. Because any great things can be delivered by great people. Mediocre people just deliver mediocre stuffs. Mediocre people with world class processes is just waste of time, false baptism and false hope.

Great people do not need processes, because they know how to do it but they may take different approach - the alternate approach is not usually mediocre, they are just different but equally efficient and effective. If you want organizational transformation, processes won't help you, tools won't help you. You got to make employees great by transforming them. The other methods sucks and usually fails. If you really want to build a world class teams, focus on right things, get your priorities right and do it always - transform people.

Don't drive focussing too much on rear mirror

Just in case, if you are successful in the past, you do not need to necessarily be successful in the future. The future may be very different. Would you ever drive only by seeing rear mirrors? Rear mirror just helps you to keep you checked. The present and the past successes are just like seeing through rear mirrors. It is something like sugar written on a paper and utmost it breeds complacency. But seeing through the future is different ball game and exciting too.

There are two ways that one can do to learn how to pierce through the future. Go through some websites and go through some presentations of people, memorize few words to appear that you are educated. Then you address a gathering rather blabber something. This one particularly works well when you have authority and up in the hierarchy. Many folks are made to sit like a ducks and they hear you duck quacking - quack, quack, quack. Irrespective of the time slots given to you, you just quack. The second way and often least preferred route is to make whole heart attempt to learn seeing through the future from the scratch. The second method is worth taking and equally rewarding.

When it comes to a vision, it has to so compelling and the strategy built has to be forward looking and motivate people to give their full. Don't blow the old trumpets which never worked, people are clever sometimes to recollect your tune as they heard it many times. No vision/strategies can be so compelling than creating a future. So, don't drive people to look backward but just encourage them to look forward because the past is irrelevant.

Work on Plus Factor - 3 + 3 = 6

When we were kid, we were fine, we were able to understand and get true learning. We learned that three plus three makes six ( 3 + 3 = 6). We were so curious on "plus". Whenever a simple math was given to us, we were so excited to solve the math. We were focused on the method rather than the result. The method, when properly thought out and done, it leads to proper results. We were so much immersed in the true learning. But as we grow, we tend to forget the "plus" factor - the experience, excitement and thinking. This is because of that we are overly focused on the results leading to fear or greed.

We need to go back to elementary school to relearn the importance of "plus" factor - the experience, excitement, thinking and joy out of true learning.