Weak Statement and Action - An Example

Today, it came in news that our Defence Minister Mr. AK Antony raised concerns on the threat of weapon's supply by US to Pakistan. He also requests US to make sure that Pakistan does not use these weapons on India but on terrorist. I am not a political observer (but I m shameful to say this). Being an Indian citizen, this causes so much concern to me.

Why USA must (or should) make sure that Pakistan does not use these weapons on India? If we are not able to make sure that Pakistan does not use those on us (read it "us - India" and not United States), how do we expect that USA will be able to do that. Is it something like a kid's play? I remember my friend's mom telling my mom to take care of my own business when I used to beat my friend. On a serious note, Mr. Minister is hoping that US will take action. He is so optimistic.

But, the general public would like to know is Mr. Minister serious about his statement.

Reinventing Myself - Asking Questions

I never thought that I would become such a waste. A couple of days back, when I was talking to my father about my childhood, he told me that I used to ask a lot of questions. He also told me (and I still vaguely remember) that I used to experiment a lot with electric switches and would be playing with 230V, 5A AC power.

Over a period of time, I totally lost myself. I did not ask questions and I did not experiment. Experimenting things and asking questions go hand in hand. When you have questions, we used to experiment and when we experiment things we tend to get a lot of questions. Experimentation together with questioning curiosity what is needed for life - may it be professional career or our personal lives.

The decisions come out of experimentation and outcome of asking several questions is certainly thought through and likely to yield more results. I learned it again couple of months back and I m currently going through a personal journey of reinventing my childhood. I hope that this journey will be fruitful and transform me.

Value - Only Word That is Cheap

Value is by far the most misused word in corporate world. When you are running a business, it makes sense when you say you want to create value. "Value" is a key ingredient to be successful. For me the term value in business is this. You and your customer did not sign something as a part of your contract, stated objectives or none of your competitors do that. When it becomes part of the contract or objectives it is no longer a value and when your competitors also create "value" the value that you create becomes basic expectations.

If you are so serious of creating value, it has to be part of your strategy, you have advertise it among your employees who eventually create value for your customer and you have to execute and review the progress sensibly. As "value creation" is over and above your base deliverable, during the inception phase, do not push things too much. Also, do not overdo things and particularly overdoing here will hurt.

Last but not least. When you create value, it is visible to the customers. You don't need to put them in every slide that you run in your organization. Do not blow things up. If there is no reaction from the customer, stop talking non sense and move on. When it comes to "value", what the customer experienced because of the value is more important than the value.

It is highly important that we understand "value" else the value becomes cheap.

Being Early - Live Example

Today, I went for an haircut which was long due. The last night, I planned to have my haircut in Naturals and I called them few times in the morning but no one was there to answer. I wanted to try my luck by directly going to their salon. I went there to only see the shop not yet opened. There is a Green Trends salon very near to Naturals and I thought I could make an appointment with them at 8.30 am. I went there and asked whether I had any free slot in the morning.

To my surprise, they said they had free slot immediately. At 8 a.m. I had my haircut and never even looked back Naturals. In Green Trends, I found at least 10 customers. If these 10 customers visit them 10 times a year, they easily make 100 more sales than Naturals. If they work on their net margin, they are more profitable than Naturals. While I was having haircut, I was deeply thinking about being early and how it helps in business. Both the salons deal with people in the higher income range. Green Trends seems to understand the importance of being early (everyday) and Naturals needs to learn a lot in being early.

This is again an example on how being early helps in business. This example can be extrapolated to any industry. Being early always has an edge over being late. It was a good learning experience today.

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.

Indian IT Industry - Be Responsible

Indian IT industry doesn't seem to understand the importance of quality of resource. Most of them make offers out of which many are bad offers. If we think that "bad offers" is an exception that can be discounted as it is negligible, we are dead wrong. Anyone with an Engineering degree (with few days of reading a programming language) can get into IT and get six digit salary. I hear interviewers saying, he is good in concepts, struggles a bit in programming but trainable. Neither the mediocre create value for the organization nor the organization creates any value to its clients. Together, we create mess.

The quality of people that get into the organization not only affects the performance or morale that exist in the team. It also creates a devastating effects to the culture of the organization. As more mediocre people get in, they deliver mediocre results and they make everyone around them mediocre. The only reason why I find we are happy in hiring mediocre people is to fill the positions and to get that "extra" bucks (and bugs). Indian IT, please be responsible. If we are not responsible, we have to pay heavy prize. China is no longer non English speaking country. So, is that the reason why most of top Indian IT opened up shops in China.

I' m back - Burning Fat

First of all, my hearty new year wishes to the readers.

It is going to be more than two months since I blogged. Work is overwhelming and never gives me time to take break for blogging. Let me not talk too much about my work. I m back in action and hope that I continue to blog. Today, I feel so happy that I m consistent for the past two weeks in jogging. Started to job again with a kilometer run and over a period of two weeks, today I jogged little over 12 kilometers. Yes, it is 12 kilometers. This is the first time I jogged that distance with my heavy body. I could feel that my fat was burning when I ran. Before I started to run today, I thought to run 15 kilometers but gave up as my knees started to give pain. So, I called it for the day and came to my room in train (BTW, I m San Jose, USA for a short trip).

It is very funny that for the first time (in US and in my life), I went to office by jogging (around 4 miles) and on my return I covered almost three quarters of distance. Overall, I jogged little more than 12 kilometers. Of course, I covered the distance in two hours.

As usual, I saw few great human beings who cheered me up on the way - a man in cycle, a lady with her son, a couple with their kid, an old lady cheered me up with a lot of smile on their face and words of greetings.

Leadership 101 - Anticipate Failures

The world is a physical balance. It has good and bad, ups and downs, successes and failures. Often people get carried by Positive Mental Attitude and they feel that being over optimistic is PMA. There is a difference. When we approach work, it is right to be optimistic. But when you are planning, you have to plan for failures. The success is not the outcome but it is your ability to out think failures. When you anticipate failures, you will know what to do when you are about to fail.

Each outcome, irrespective of success or failure, needs to follow a general pattern. There is a success pattern and failure pattern. When you anticipate failure, you will be more attuned to recognize the red flags and hence you will try to make corrective action. When you do that, there is a great chance for you to get away from failure. One of the key things needed to be successful is the ability to anticipate failures due to your action and correct your action recognizing the red flags. Great leaders anticipate failures. It doesn't mean that they are pessimist. It means that they are even prepared for the worst. So, anticipate failures.

Leadership 101 - Truth Travels with Great Speed

One of the thing that I often wonder is "truth". In my lifetime, I have lied for many things and went against truth many times but yet surrendered to the truth "always". The more I think of being "untruth", the more fierce it becomes. So, it left a deep impact and I learned the importance of being truthful. The truth travels with great speed. If you are truthful, it helps us to steer through the tight corner and if you are untruthful it grills us. If you are untruthful, clear submission to the truth is the only option.

Today, I happened to meet a person who was very poor in something. The impact that he is going to cause me is very little but yet I sat with him and told him the "hard truth". Then, his perception about life/work changed and within few minutes he understood his true state. His confidence grew and he promised that I would see him differently next time when we meet. In the whole of situation, my contribution is very little but the contribution of truth is immense. Today, yet another time in my life, I learned the importance of being truthful. It was a wonderful day.

Retaining People – Human Resource is Abundance yet Scarce

The economy is recovering and we see organizations investing again with a lot of hope. Job market too has recovered due to people movement and creation of fresh positions. If you are leading a team and for next one year, you will be facing enough challenges in terms of retaining people. During this period if we keep up the basics and control things that we can control, firefighting will give decent results. Here are some of the things that you have to do. BTW, the following things should be done “always” irrespective of job market.

Connect with the team. Make them understand about the organization. Give authentic information and suggestions.

Challenge them quite well. Give assignments that make them think and always little bit tough to achieve with ordinary efforts. Appreciate openly and celebrate them when they make big mistakes trying big things they never tried.

Recognize both efforts and results. If you are dealing with less experienced people, sit with them and hear how they solved the problems. You can see their eyes go bright.

Give a feeling that you won’t let them fail. Authentically work on their growth. If they don’t have enough skills, sit with them and draw plan.

Motivate people and celebrate successes. Most importantly respect them. If you turn their suggestions down, do it respectfully.

Keep a close watch on overall performance. Understand the language of performance and never compromise on it. It is lifeline. You don't need non performance even if they have niche skills.

Understand their concerns. Empathize. If their concerns are not valid or reasonable, tell them up front that you cannot fulfill them. Let they also know why it is not reasonable. Set the expectations right.

Don’t negotiate money. If they want to exit because of money, let them do it. If it is more ownership and challenges, give them opportunity that gives them new experience. Don’t negotiate money. It doesn’t work.

Anticipate bad things and work on contingency plans. It is highly important that you deliver even when you don’t have super stars. Have “Plan B”. Start to work on contingency plans.

Always speak the truth. Don’t woo them.

I have been practicing above things past two years and so far it worked. I strongly believe, it will work in future too.

Are You Restless With Things Around You?

The external environment affects us so much and we just fall as victim to the environment. We feel so bad for falling as victim and often feel that we are not able to solve some problems. For example, we agitate a lot when we see child labor, misuse of power, corruption, someone not performing their duties and the list can be endless. The main problem is that we want this world to think exactly like us. If you are over pragmatic, you will know that is not possible and you certainly fall on the other spectrum which is not caring too much about you and the world around you. This post is for people who agitate, agitate a lot. Agitation or becoming restless is a wonderful thing. That shows that you have awareness and you are so concerned about the environment.

When will you become restless? You become restless when you are aware that you are wasting your energy not producing any work or little. This is exactly how the external environment affects us. We react to the happenings to the environment. We fail to understand that we cannot react at the pace of the environment. If you think so, you will have time only to context switch. You need to understand the purpose of life and diligently move towards it by channelizing energy. If you channelize the energy, you will not become restless. You will understand the purpose and feel satisfied with the path you have chose.n If you are restless, it is great thing. You need little introspection, little bit of self talking and little effort to connect with yourself in perfect synchrony.

The key to add value to this world is to become restless and then to move towards the purpose of life without forgetting the environment. The solutions to all problems lies in our head. We just need to channelize energy and think.

I have read few of self help books. I can say most of them did not apply to me because I feel that I am unique and I am special case. But all those books gave me little thought to do a deep introspection and all those books helped me to move out of "restlessness" and be focused on the "purpose".