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.

Competing for the future - Chapter 1

It has been quite a while after I started to read "Competing for the future" by Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad. I have read through the first chapter twice and planning to read few more times before moving on further. The first chapter just sets the context of whole of the book and brings out the importance of reinventing the industry by regenerating core strategies moving beyond restructuring and reengineering. The first chapter emphasizes the very need of organization transformation in the light of industry transformation against organizational transformation to just catch up with the competitors. The former is blue ocean and the latter is read ocean. The first chapter gives a lot of examples of companies like IBM, Sears, Xerox on why they failed and HP, Wal-mart on why they were successful. I certainly feel that I have invested in a good book to improve by business knowledge. More posts to come on other chapters.

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.

Reskill or be ready to be irrelevant

People used to say that "Change is Permanent". But when you closely watch the change, we will understand that change is not permanent. Let us consider the penetration of technology in our everyday life. Few decades before the penetration of technology was slow and not that rapid. But today, we have so many new markets, so many new products and people often surprised by the technological change. By the time people get accustomed with one technology, it becomes irrelevant and people feel that they are left behind. So, in today's fast paced technological life, we cannot say "no" adapting to change as we may need to completely renounce technology (which no one is ready). Even the change changes rapidly with more acceleration than the previous day.

The same is the case with an organization because the organizations are also built on top of technology and it cannot isolate itself from outside world. If the organizations want to leverage the maximum from the change, it is highly essential that the organization goes for reskilling everyday. The individual need to forget the technology/concepts that became irrelevant and should start learning new things that are widely adopted.

The only way that the organization can be competitive is by reskilling its employees. So, reskill, reskill, reskill.

Leading a change - My Views

There was a fire breakout in a community and all the people living in the community work hard with the firemen to put off the fire. The fire extinguish operation went on for almost 10 hours and finally all were allowed to get into their homes. The community felt that such fire accidents were painful and now they were able to manage with fire since it happened for fifth time in a row. Now it had become a growing problem. The community also had an association and they planned to meet on Sunday to talk about the recent fire accident and put an end to such accidents by adapting fire prevention measures. Sunday came, they met and installed fire prevention funds diverting association funds and collecting additional money from each home owners.

If you look at this case, this is a change and on a contrary to the popular belief - the people will be against the change, the co-operation was tremendous. The people were willing to co-operate and more inviting to the change. How people co-operated? It is because of one thing that connect the change and the people who adapts to the change which is permanently putting off the fire. They were happy that they no longer need to spend sleepless and painful nights/days with dreadful fire. The one thing - the very purpose of the change has to be powerful and the other things like communication, branding, piloting, feedback comes next (but certainly important).

If you are leading a change, if you can find a single idea that interconnects people and connect people with the change, the change will be successful. Else, it suffers and digs it own grave.

Stop being a Bozo, be Sensible

The world revolves around me and how can it revolve around the sun. I am the leader, possibly because I am more experienced (probably few more days) than you and you got to think as I expect you think, I will give a dot and you have the freedom to stand and if you are intelligent to play within the dot and most important thing is that you have to update me, when you do anything. Welcome to the world of old generation. This concept of leadership is old, probably only few hundred years when we lived with animals. We say arsenic is silent killer, but this is sick leadership and dreadful than arsenic. It kills people shaking their self-confidence, spoiling their creativity. It helps to create herds not organization.

I think, "sick leadership" should have been a conspiracy against an organization. It is clearly a trend and starts with an idiot who has more power and end up misusing his power. While he misuses his/her power, some class B sees it and there comes the perfect understanding. This class B again creates many class B when Class B reaches a threshold gives way to Class C. The sick leadership will appear to give great results but it just gives wrong hopes. The term follower has often misunderstood. The follower has a different meaning than a slave and a happy slave can never be a follower. The follower connects with leader for a common and noble purpose. The leader has a different meaning than bozo.

Stopping being a Bozo, be sensible.

What leader got to do - Identify and Delegate

If you are idle chick, you will served as soup - you will be chicken soup for someone's dinner. As more Gen Ys are supposed to join as workforce, it is very important that a leader understands the typical attributes of Gen Ys. There is a intelligent Gen Y in my team. He uses his mobile and says that I will send status report in SMS. I can hardly understand what he types and I am totally incompetent before his SMS English. After sending SMS, he justs laughs at me. But he completes his job well and inspires others with his workmanship.

It is not only life style that is different, the apporach towards work changes between Gen X and Gen Y. All intelligent and focussed Gen Ys aspire to become project managers within 5 years and the important point is that those people are willing to stretch. They look work as place to learn, they want their managers to be their mentors. In this scenario, one needs to exercise atmost care in spoting the talent and grooming it. This is unusually difficult because they expect to grow faster. For the modern day manager and particularly Gen X managers, it is going to difficult to keep up the pace with Gen Y's expectations. One needs to spot the talent and wait no time to delegate it to next level. Delegation has been there in dictionary and management books for a very long time but it is the time to put that into practice. Else, the leaders job will be difficult in handling Gen Ys.

The leader's job is to identify talent, delegate work and move on to take up something big. This has to be a never ending loop :-).

Which Skill to Unlearn?

You call it moving out of comfort zone or unlearning or new responsibilities, whatever you call it, do it in action. Moving out of comfort zone remembers me of one of the rituals done in Hindu mythology. The people who seek enlightenment (often elderly people) used to go on pilgrimage to various parts of India. The places and temples various based on customs, culture and so many other factors. But generally people never miss certain places like Kasi, Rameswaram. As a mark of renunciation, the people generally leave something (some food or vegetable) at Kasi in the river Ganges and they should never consume the food in their lifetime thereafter. My grandmother also visited there and left a vegetable which liked the most. All my relatives were asking her why did she leave that because she cannot eat that vegetable in her lifetime. She said, she had enough of it and this is right time to renounce. Those words make sense to me now.

As a human being, we are quite comfortable in doing something. By doing that "comfortable thing" we never get something new. When you do not do something new, you will not get something new. The first thing one got to do is unlearn the skills that we are overly confident and take up something which is knee trembling. If you feel that learning will uplift you, unlearning will super-lift you. It is imperative that we, the human being should master the art of unlearning to realize our potential. Other may call it a risk, but for us it is way of life. The human brain should always be stretched for simple reason to show that you have brain and have been using it constantly :-)

Being Irrelevant - State of Outsourcing

Right from Globalization and the day when outsourcing came to mainstream in the name of software exports, Indian IT industry has been revolving around a single business model. I give you "1000000" hours and you give X dollars. To start with, the business model of this kind may be apt and for a matured industry and some may comment the industry has saturated, it may be unhealthy. I would say the industry has not saturated but the business model has saturated. There are two questions that needs to be answered

1. How will the buyer of the service know that the service provider has in fact worked for X hours? Is there a mechanism? While one may argue that both the buyer and provider will have "mutual trust", but is "trust" alone sufficient? If you are a much capable service provider how are you going to show that you are in fact delivering more in X hours? How is it reflected in your revenue?

2. It is pretty reasonable to ask for warranty when you buy electronic gadget of $20 (or even less). In most of the cases, it comes with one year warranty. This means that when you go to shopping mall and buy something, you expect that it will work well at least for a year without you requiring to pay additional cost. But when you are spending huge dollars in outsourcing, don't you need to push some risk to service provider.

With the current model, the software is never seen as product but software development activities are seen as service. The buyers need to shift their focus from buying service to buying product and this can only happen with a different business model. With the help of new business model, the buyers will be able to push some risk to the providers and at the same time the providers will be able to get increased compensation for their products. This also gives flexibility to buyers as they can focus on multiple products and geographies.

If you look other industry, for example, energy industry, the companies have already started to think about charging customers based on the amount of output that is produced not on amount of input used. This is the right time for us (Indian IT Industry) to get away from old business model and take up something which shows signs of maturity.

Google Chrome - Ambitious Project

Few days back Google announced a new operating system and the announcement did not stir any reactions from Microsoft. Google is trying to push SaaS as next generation de-facto technology and today it is trying to build tools to wrap around which can be later used to push the technology further to its advantage. On the other hand it seems like Microsoft (and most of the other companies) lost their fuel to do something for next generation. I believe Microsoft will never come out of outdating technology. Its strategy will be revolving around its core products MS Windows, Office and other similar products. But Google is trying to change the field by taking a giant leap on how computing and data is stored.

We are already witnessing trends of moving towards cloud and SaaS. I believe Google's intention and strategy is not to outsmart Microsoft but to take computing to next level. Another advantage to Google is that it is going to release Chrome as open source which may eat up Windows marketshare over a period of time as more and more applications made available to work on Google Chrome. Rather than selling applications, Google business model would be selling services. Let us hold the breath until later half of next year to get the feel of Google Chrome.

India and China - Propellant of Global Economy

The dream of India to become global economy propellant may soon come true. India, together with other developing economies in the region especially China, may drive the growth of global economy. As the time passes on, these developing economies are becoming more relevant to propel prosperity. This month's Harvard Business Review comes with a sweet news and alarms the global organizations to watch out for top ten trends - India and China being one among them.

While the consumer spending plummeting all over the world, post recovery, the consumer spending in India and China will be heading higher. US continue to be in the top followed by China at the second position. European countries will occupy the third position and fourth place by Japan. India will be the fifth country. China, India and Japan (Asian countries) put together will have consumers who are ready to buy products. What does it mean to us? It means that Asian countries will have new level of influence and responsibility to propel global economy. All the developed nations will be willing to do business with Asian countries and we will see "protectionism" will be underplayed and we will again step into controlled liberalization. We are going to see more liberal voices and policies soon.