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.

How to Trade Stocks

This is just a speculation and not proven theory. I m seeing some trend quite consistently and based on my theory (yet to be verified)

Buy stocks on Monday/Tuesday. Sell it on Thursday evening or Friday Morning. Market will certainly go down on Friday afternoon. (take care in case Friday is holiday). This gives you some quick bucks.

I advise readers to trade at their own risk and this applies only in Indian stock exchanges (NSE/BSE). Hope, many of you know that I m not a qualified stock analyst :-)

But if you made some bucks, you have to strictly give me some royalty.

Producing Leaders Vs Producing Business

I had a view that the organizations should produce leaders to win in business. Now, I feel that it is the other way. The business (or need) produces the leaders. I m not talking about building one's leadership qualities. I m talking about the need of leaders to drive business goals. When you have business, you will have a support system or a cushion for people to be always at peak of their performance (meeting business goals) and the mistakes are quite fine when you are at your peak performance. When the people are at their peak performance, they naturally become stars. So, producing leaders (or rather business leaders) starts with producing more business. If you have more project managers (or more seniors), you need to have more projects.

If you ask me, which takes precedence, I would say "producing business" makes bigger sense than "producing leaders".

Killing of Jawans by Maoist and Ministers Reaction

This is the recent development and only national news channels are telecasting it continuously. As usual the channels in Tamilnadu are talking about either CM's by-election victory or Amma's Aarpattam. There are around 74 jawans killed when at least 1000 Maoist started to attack jawans. Many of the jawans are missing. Our heartfelt salutes for jawans who lost life and condolences for their family.

On hearing this, like a general public, our home minister was shocked. On hearing him saying that he was shocked, I was shocked. Because a couple of days back our home minister gave an ultimatum to Maoist while he was visiting West Bengal. What the government is going to do is a still a big million dollar question.

Medicine or Poison - Let us Wake Up

This news is there for a while and for most of us it is just a news. We don't go medical shop that frequently and there is every possibility that we get good medicine even if we go or very least we can think that we will get medicines that are perfect to cure diseases. Few months back, I heard an interview from a government health officer in radio (FM) and he promised that there are no incidences of selling fake or expired medicine. He said that the medicines given in government hospitals had very strict quality control. But it seemed genuine when he accepted that there were few isolated cases but that could not be generalized.

Recently, there was a big scam or rather a cruelty brought into light. It was shocking to hear about a single person involved in selling of expired and contaminated medicines. He used to involve in an activity of collecting drugs from garbage (that were thrown out by people) and sold it to shops like a drug distributor. Should we believe that this is done by a single person? How can the collection, packaging, distribution and selling of expired medicine of such massive scale be done by single person without any help from others? The magnitude is so big and revenue picks to few hundred crores. 

Just few minutes back, I heard someone in drug distribution (I bet he must be a President or in similar post) to talk about medicine. His statement was too general to believe. He says that the medicine loses weight after expiry date and loses it power or curing capabilities. He says that it will not cause death. Another one says that the people should buy medicines in full strips so that the expiry dates printed in the strip is not cut away and clearly visible. For sure, these creatures are better to be magicians. The guys who sell medicine on the road side ("legiyam vickaravan") are much better than these creatures. I don't want to ask them whether they will give this medicine to their loved ones or for that matter will they go and buy the entire strip when they just need two tablets. This shows that how irresponsible they are and I quite related to Mr. Subroto Bagchi's example of a doctor who sold kidneys and later to fled to Nepal. This is pure impurity - the lack of integrity and the lack of professionalism.

But I m sure that the guy involved in this scam will also get bail in few months and lead a peaceful life. At maximum he will be fined few lakhs, the bank account and property in his name will be seized (but his wife's, son's, friend's, relatives' and dogs' account will not be seized) and few police officers will get promotion, the chief minister will appreciate the police department (and himself) for being proactive.

But who is responsible for betraying the people who did not get a chance to go to medical college (or any school) and ended up swallowing the poison?

Again Mr. Subroto Bagchi - "The Professional"

Having been a professional for past eight years, I was bit late to understand who a professional is? It is better late than never. It is again Mr. Subroto Bagchi with his classical writing on a very complex topic without a pinch of overdose. The book has little more than 200 pages and it talks about the characteristics of a true professional. The book has seven parts - Integrity, Self Awareness, Professional Qualities, Managing Volume, Managing Complexity, New World Imperatives, The Professional's Professional and finally a short write up on "The Unprofessional".

The whole of book is nicely written with deeper insights There are many anecdotes from Mr. Bagchi's work life. The portions on the topic "Integrity" and the story of Mahadeva is inspiring and it gives me courage to keep up my integrity. This is my second reading of the books my Mr. Bagchi and the previous one was "Go Kiss The World".After reading the book, I understand what it takes to be a true professional and the missing pieces in me. I urge you to read the book "The Professional" at least once. When you retire, you will leave a legacy at your work place.

The Professional (Buy from Flipkart.com in India)

Adversity - How to Face It?

Neither my mom nor my dad had decent luxuries in their early lives. Both of them were born in a big family that struggled to meet both ends meet especially my mom's and aunt's/uncle's lives were nothing but adversity. When we (my sisters and myself) were young, our hobby was to hear my mom's early life. She used to explain us how they traveled by barefoot to her schools and how my uncles studied their diploma/colleges. When I was too young, I used to hear the story very with involvement. The involvement was just to get entertainment and pass time before my sleep. But later, as I grow up (still many of my friends shout at me when I say I m growing up :-) ), I started to listen to her on how the brothers and sisters missed a meal per day but yet how they stood by a core values.

My grandmother, an angel, in my role model. When she did not have food to feed her children, she fed her children with core/human values. I used to think, how come is it possible for a family to have such an wonderful value system. Now, I realize that it came from my grandmother. Being an orthodox family (and not well to do), it is really difficult to stand by core values. But yet they did. Awesome.

How did they face it? Whether to give control to the time thinking that everything will be taken care of? Or Is it fine to handle or workaround the situation to silently pledge the core/human values? Or to blame God who you think deaf when you always run into problems? I never heard them doing something wrong or talking bad about God for their hardship. When I try to understand what made them to stand on their values, it is love towards the family, the hope that things will fall on its plate pretty soon  and to work on the little they had in their hands and unprecedented passion towards "being human". Even when they are well off today, I find them modest and practicing the core/human values. Love, Hope and Passion are key ingredients to sail through hardship.

Push The Thinking Horizon

It was 12pm. I dialed the number in my mobile. I could really feel how distant Hyderabad is. It was Naveen who attended HCL interview in Hyderabad, a couple of weeks back. Impressed with his performance in interview, I was following up with him whether he joins us. As soon as he lifted his phone, he said, "Hey, Lakshmi", how are you doing?" and suddenly his voice went down. He told me, "Lakshmi, I asked my parents whether I can join HCL, Chennai". They said, "no". He went on to say, "I miss HCL" (so am I :-)). He said another thing that was shocking to me. He said, "you are the best person I met. I want to join HCL simply because you. Now, I cannot join but in future I will join". For sure, I will see this guy becoming terrific.

What did I do to be seen as best person other than interviewing him for more than four hours and thirty minutes of orientation post interview. On the interview day, I was just trying to bring out best out of him. I saw his eyes go bright on seeing his answers and when I try to put his answers into a perspective of problem solving.

The people love you when you make them super star, when you make them to stretch their thinking horizon, when you make them to do something different from their usual mundane work.

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.

Human Rights - Where is It?

Yesterday, I was little late to home. Around 9am (or close to that), as usual I was driving at 45 kmph. My ride went on fine without much problems. As usual there were few buses that occupy the mid of the road and suddenly came off the road for no reasons. There were few boys (seems like they never got opportunity to grow up) zipping through all the lanes. Living in Chennai gave me lot of patience particularly when I am on wheels.

Near Hotel Trident (I use the left to reach my home at Nanganallur), there was a small traffic jam (don't ask me where is the bread). I (and anyone who uses that road) know that the road will have potholes, but these days I search for road to safely take the front wheel of my motorcycle. For the past two years, I never bother about back wheel and I always assume that it is intact. Till now, my assumption is proven right.

After seeing the traffic jam, I thought, I would have a break from driving for few seconds to few minutes. Since I like taking breaks during my drive (you know, my approach towards life is optimistic), I was eagerly expecting that this break would soothe me though my home is just 2 km away. Unlike the usual breaks that I used to take, this one was shocking and I was speechless to see the arrogance of a policeman.

There were two vehicles that were parked conveniently - a lorry occupying little space from end of the road to mid of the road and a auto occupying the corner. There stood the auto driver and behind him a policeman. I thought that they were having a friendly chat or I could possibly think that the policeman was doing his usual ritual (don't ask me what is the usual ritual). But within few seconds, he took his stick and started to beat the auto driver quite arrogantly. The driver was crying to stop the beating. Before the policeman could hear, the driver had received probably 10 heavy beatings barring 10 more beatings that fell on the auto off the target.

While I dont know what caused the policeman to show huge displeasure and arrogance towards the auto driver but I certainly feel that that was not a way to treat a human being. That was totally inhumane.