Sunshine

2023-07-24T23:13:00.010-07:00

Comparing Bing Chat , Open AI chat GPt and Google bard: Chatting with BOB

First half of 2023 has been exciting month in terms of further developments in the AI ecosystem, while Meta launched new Llama version. MS integrated Open AIs chat GPT capabilities into its Azure stack of services as well as power apps, flows and AI generator. Microsoft also launched Bing Chat public and Enterprise version rapidly scaling GPT 4 based chat searches to an enterprise grade tool with many additional capabilities.

Google Bard which works on PaLM - 2 is also improving gradually , I decided to compare Bing , Open AI chat GPT and Bard (BOB) form an end user perspective with publicly available versions (Not Enterprise versions). For the purpose of this comparison I have ignored any open AI chat GPT plug ins which may extend its functionalities and allow it to perform some more tasks.

GUI:-

While Open AI GPT has still been running on same GUI from last 6 months or so its other counterparts have not only done some improvements but also used their ecosystems to integrate their search Bots with it

Open AI CHAT GPT has prompt input, output area as well as historical view. Whereas if we look at Bing Chat it has added image and voice inputs with text for prompt input . It provides latest web indexed up to date information post searching from internet and citations as well as follow up prompt suggestions related to topic. One of the key drawback of Bing chat is that its currently locked in with MS edge and doesn’t work with any other browser.

Bard is also well integrated with google search. Its prompt input supports both text and voice (No image yet) but you can provide an image of video for it to analyse via URL for example you can directly give it a you tube video link and ask Bard to explain same .Once the output is provided there is option to convert response text to voice as well as share or google and provide feedback. The output of each prompt is provided in 3 draft variants and any one of those can be further explored.

Up to date information:

Both Bing chat and Google Bard use indexed internet UpToDate information to provide prompt response whereas open AI has still been restricted to 2021 data making Bing and Bard immediate first choice for users to get their answers based on live information.

Citations:

One of the key struggle for organizations and users developing AI use cases is to get the clarity and source of information behind the output provided and Bing and Bard has now taken next step by providing link to citations of their source information whereas in Open AI chat users are still left wondering form which exact source the information has been provided.

Custom doc training:

Bing and Bard have provided easy way to provide response on custom user docs , Bing can access links to a web page or a document which Is opened in MS edge and provide summarization , answers on those document which is also possible for Bard but same is not an off the shelf functionality with Open AI chat GPT.

Image and Speech handling:

While Open AI GPT is still a text-based interface even after having a sibling Dall E available for image generation its synergies have not been used. Microsoft Bing has combined both images and text and not only it can recognize images but also use Dall-E to generate images for various prompts. Bing is also able to understand speech prompts.

Google bard has also extended its functionalities to speech where it is able to understand speech prompt and also read out the outcome to users. These functionalities represent true inclusiveness for AI which will enable Bing and Bard to reach larger section of users.

speed & Temperature control:

All 3 chats support temperature control helping response to be either more factual or more creative.

Since Bing and Bard are actually using internet search as well they seem a bit slower then Open AI GPT which starts generating response as soon as prompt is submitted.

Summary:

Overall Microsoft has leaped ahead in using its mighty ecosystem and integrating GPT4 based bing chat with its various platforms thus creating a perfect package for organizations which can be adopted rapidly without much work for their custom data training. Its key to highlight while GPT 4 has been found to be better then GPT 3.5 , recent study by UC Berkley and Stanford which compared two lates versions of GPT 4 released between March and June have raised concern about GPT 4s performance and accuracy for mathematical calculations .

Google Bard has also been catching up rapidly and available for enterprise use by Google workspace. Open AI GPT has been released for commercial use with various plans and is open for enterprise use either directly or via API integration.

2023-07-23T23:46:00.002-07:00

Keeping an Eye on AI

Recent announcements and developments in the field of Generative AI has triggered a race to “AI first” systems. Within 2 months over 100 million users rushed to experiment with chat GPT and all large product organizations have been making announcements about new products, use cases and LLMs. This creates a ripple effect for business and operations for faster adoption and especially fear of missing out. What also need to evolve at same speed and urgency is local and global governance for these AI systems and use cases at both technological as well as ethical level. While entire concept of AI is being independent in creating, learning, and taking decision, we have sufficient and significant examples to indicate that we need to keep an eye on AI systems and design them in such a way that enables monitoring of various key parameters like efficacy, bias, usage of data and adherence to various legal frameworks.

• Hallucinations handling : Its not unlikely for humans to speculate or make statements based on assumptions. With human like creativity its obvious that AI has also learnt to provide made up answers when it doesn’t have needed facts and data on the topic, this is called hallucination. In near future there will be more development to handle hallucination, but two things are key here first of all to train AI model with as much data as possible and second to provide users a feedback options so that they can report an hallucination of the system to owners for corrective actions and interventions.

• Watermarking: With AI creating human like artifacts its becoming increasingly important to differentiate what’s generated by AI and what’s not hence watermarking the content created by AI should be one of the basic and standard principles.

• Sustainability: In an interview in Q1 2023 Sam Altman, Open AI CEO had mentioned that cost of cloud infrastructure training and running chat GPT is eye watering. Open AI and all such organizations are using thousands of chips and other hardware (directly or indirectly) as well as energy which have significant and probably equally eye watering impact to environment ranging from carbon footprint to e waste generated with out of use hardware. This makes its critical that all AI use cases in business and IT consider possible impact on sustainability vs the benefit such AI systems will generate. A technological eco system need to be evolved which can help us in better review and decision making of environmental impact of any It system.

• Performance Monitoring: At the current fast paced AI adoption into business at times the ultimate business functionality is of paramount importance but with that we also need a comprehensive approach for performance monitoring and benchmarking tailored to each system. While its good to rely on product vendors promises, we need to embed our own performance review and benchmarking which will lead to overall efficacy improvement for system and models.

• Human in loop: At the early stage of AI adoption for any system and process we must keep human in loop to accept or reject the outcome generated by AI. This will help in setting up accountability on the team or organization for the decisions taken by AI .

• Transparency: We discussed watermarking in this document but that’s invisible to human eyes and mostly detected by system whereas its critical that all users know and understand what part of their decision or outcome they have been handed over is coming from AI hence systems need to be designed for giving clear warnings and disclaimer to business users and also how has that been arrived

Can a Lady Speak ?

2023-02-17T00:19:00.003-08:00

Once upon a time in there was an analytical platform called chankaya to provide critical insight to business users , the massive platform had more than 25 business critical services hosted with thousands of dashboard providing real time as well as historical view . There were three leaders and respective teams supporting the ecosystem Brahma Kumar was responsible for all innovation from hardware to semantic layers , he ensured the internal machineries of system ran smoothly abstracting all the complexities from end users , he kept performing system upgrade bringing new and improved infrastructure as well as resolving old issues with system . He had two more counterparts , Vishnu Vardhan responsible for BAU activities of Chanakya who had teams of Application support consultants taking care of daily data load , front end and user issues . The teams of Brahma and Vishnu were highly technical and SMEs in their areas hence there was another small team present in ecosystem which was lead by Prakriti , Prakriti and her team under stood business context of system and report and they provided an interface between technical teams and Business users .

Business users looked up to prakriti for all communication and decision related Chanakya’s availability. In 2016 Brahma suggested a major version upgrade to Chanakya’s database which was nearing end of life in few months . The business case was created and approved by needed stakeholders , Vishnu lined up his teams for all necessary support , testing , reschedules whereas Prakriti worked with business leaders to understand bets suited weekend where a downtime of 12 hours can be taken and system can be upgraded , the idea was to upgrade system on Saturday , ran needed loads on Sunday and let system be available on Monday for users to use . The D day arrived , by then all teams had rehearsed the plan and executed same in non production environments , there was good confidence that activity will be closed within time .

Chanakya was taken down , old data base backed up and restored into a newly built database environment , user permissions migrated and DNS names switched some of the initial tests were encouraging where technical teams could connect to data base and run query , see data . The ultimate litmus test was to trigger data loads , these data load jobs were veins of chankaya transporting the life blood – data to all the front end dashboards . Initial data loads refused to trigger from new data base , team assumed basic problems of access controls , job paths , source connection , firewall ports and checked one by one but none had shown any issue . Brahma and his team was already on the job from Saturday morning till Sunday morning , 12 hours past deadline of releasing the system , Vishnu was keeping close eye and his team was running all checks and supports both knew that a lot of effort has been spent on the project so far and it must get forward fixed to avoid restarting the exercise which will take months .

Prakriti on the other hand were worried that we have now crossed Sunday morning , a very thin window of running the data loads and making system available to business is left , if we continue fixing the issue , there will be chaos on Monday morning across multiple business functions . A checkpoint call was set up at 10:00 AM on Sunday to discuss next action items , when Prakriti joined Brahma was already updating on list of actions his teem took so far and he thought may be a full reboot of new data base and clearing the log once again could do the trick , the heated discussion on technicalities , steps involved went forward and backward between Brahma and Vishnu . After listening this for a while prakriti spoke – “can a lady speak”?

Call went silent which was broken by prakriti’s voice , “ A functional system even if old infrastructure is worth millions whereas a non functional system on upgraded infrastructure wont be of any value to us or business “ while I understand all of our effort in coming to this point but our commitment to business was to return a functional system on Monday which I am determined to do , we will need to revisit our approach and perform this upgrade in near future , I will make a case with business and get us another slot in next quarter by when our expert teams would have identified and fixed the issue .

Both Brahma and Vishnu could see the logic and agreed with heavy heart .

“can a leady speak ? “ still remains a key question in a cosmos where nature has inherently created balance with 50% women , this question had large social relevance , it took long time in many societies to let lady speak on key decisions and yet “can a lady speak ?” still remains a question in many of the developing societies .

Can a lady speak in matter of house hold finances, Can a lady speak in deciding future of her children in fact can a lady speak in deciding her own future ?

This inherent barrier has automatically crept into corporate world , in 21^st century it will be just to say it happens unintentionally and subconsciously unlike in previous centuries .

Ultimately lady will speak , woman will need to find her voice and speak assertively , some times it may need asking a dramatic question “can a lady speak?” but it should be a collective effort on all of us that no one needs to ask that question , we ourselves need to go around asking opinion from all those who missed out speaking , some times voices need enablement and support !.

The Go Live

2016-06-06T23:09:00.001-07:00

Week had just started , On Tuesday itself It was proving to be hectic week for Venkat. There were continuous meetings and report preparation for newly live HR application . As per normal change and release process this was sent to production over medium release weekend after completing all formalities and Monday was the first day when employees and HR of organization started using it , so far they were used to a legacy system which had less functionalities and limited usage hence many of the activities were performed into various different applications or even out side system by mail or hardcopies , New configurable system definitely had an edge over older ones as it was true representation of Global HR best practices and had lot more automated functions then actually needed , some even futuristic which organizations can activate whenever they need .

Venkat is operations manager and handles very large portfolio of IT support and services , after landing into RUN mode this application was his responsibility , though there was still post go live support active by Innovation team lead by Prajapati who was actively involved in managing the crisis , there was already mails flowing from HR leadership to provide quick and efficient support , VP of HR even provided a deadline to provide solution within a week or HR would move back old legacy system which was still fall back option as Business continuity and had to be decommissioned once new system is completely adopted across organization .

Since Venkat and team had good understanding of user behavior , issues and expectation from previous system , Management had directed RUN team to support project in this crisis . Venkat himself was very keen to engage in early stages for this strategic HR solution , He had also been active participants in all gates meeting and tried to put all kind of checks to ensure delivery of a robust and resilient service however he was now regretting not pushing the case for performance testing hard enough , in one of the gate meeting when Prajapati proposed skipping performance testing as there was not sufficient budget to establish a production like environment and go for automated performance tetsing simulating user concurrencies , multiple parallel processing etc , Venkat did raise an objection mentioning Performance testing is crucial to understand basics thresholds which was supported and agreed by all key stakeholders in meeting . Taking a note of this condition Prajapati mentioned He would discuss with project implementation partners and product vendor to see how can we assure performance of the application , In subsequent meetings Prajapati produced an assessment completed by product Vendor which assured basic performance levels based on system capacity , number of users etc .

Venkat accepted this report and it analysis however post implementation System performance seems to be the most critical issue , New HR system had many advanced features and users were complaining these features take minutes to load and complete . On the other side while older system had limitation of number of employees associated with a manager , new one had no such limitation which enabled users to assign many employees with Manager but it made activities extremely slow , though product vendor had given a much higher threshold for assignment but system was showing issues at half of the threshold itself . Another challenges seems to be older version of internet explores and laptop configurations , Change management had not been able to asses that such advanced features may need some uplift of users laptops . All these issues have created many incidents in the first day itself and huge frustration in Users

The Fat Indian Bonus

2014-11-11T02:13:00.002-08:00

Unlike rest of the world where bonus is given at the end of financial year , In india bonus is tightly linked to the biggest festival of the year - Deewali , on which most of the Indian Poor/middle/upper class outspend from thier budget to buy any and everything .

In 2014 , a Diamond exporter of Gujrat state savji bhai Dholakia , surprised its employees as well as entire nation by giving away 2 BHK flats , Cars and Jewelries worth 50 cr to one fifth of its employees ( near 1200) , as of now diamond cutting is not a very organized sector in India but Savji bhai has been giving all the facilities to his employees which are found in organized sectors , in fact he is going one step ahead and adding to this certain items which are core to India values and families like sending parents of employees on pilgrimage .

What stands out that Savji bhai has built great deal of understanding on the needs of employees and giving bonus suitable to such needs , he also understands , for Indian employees their family / parents . He has also kept on increasing the bonus share for employees with companies revenue and profit . by doing this Savji and his organization has definitely become best employer in diamond export industry

Crisis Day

2014-08-28T00:05:00.001-07:00

It was business as usual one day and then it happened , didn't start exactly as Jungle fire but rather slowly , Key application used by many countries in a region had decided to take it easy , gradually users started complaining that application is not responding as fast as it used be , for some it wasn't even responding . Business panicked on possible loss of time and not able to move on with routine activities , multiple high incidents and a final blow came as an urgent incident - The moment of truth had arrived , formal P1 declared that means almost every one need to jump in to the crisis call , application support , Application/DB administrators , Managers , product SMEs.

Initially everything was a suspect , All teams started coming out with their analysis but seems no problem identified for funny system behavior, temperature was rising in conference , Business was waiting to move on in such case responsibility landed with product vendor , they have designed it and they would know it for sure and as always they were full of suggestions , we can try this or that , issue seems to be here or little there .

IT realized it was better to try something and move forward rather than not trying any thing so they started with options , subsequent restarts but it did not help so it was time to move on with second option , meanwhile looking at criticality of the issue some more resources pumped in hoping to revive system , that seems to be working for a while.

Teams went back to check further , monitoring on all parameter was put in place meanwhile application kept showing its mood swings and one day it again became business as usual , problem stopped as abruptly as it started , some had clue that executed actions may have improved the condition only hoping that it would not happen again

Let them Know

2013-01-09T22:26:00.002-08:00

A mega event was nearing and organisation was preparing with full thrust , recently developed marketing app to also be used in this event for first time , business was nervous about any issues , its usability , effective support . Constant pressure was built on manager of IT service provider who was supporting this app , every time he visisted his customers in IT/Business , people reminded him how crucial the upcoming event is , mails were started flowing highlighting the situation . IT team and managers were very confident knowing it was a very small app and they have some of the really best SMEs working with this customer for years , they are available and will handle any situation promptly , same was also informed to the the customer but panick continued ..

Support manager understood that emotions can be calmed by showing a structured plan , he sat down with team and developed a shift wise plan for the duration of the event , created a daily report template to be circulated , established escalation structure and wrote it down in the form of document , most of it was already in place as part of application support but team carved out a small support plan very specific to this application , same was submitted to to customer IT and business .
They could now see what all steps will be taken , who can be contacted in hour of crisis and above all thier vendor team is ready to stretch equally to make it a success , they are a stakeholder with written commitment in the form of a plan , emotions calmed down , all aspects were covered.

During event , support team adhered to the plan , there were no issue reported and yet they kept sending thier daily report template . For minor requests also resolution was provided in urgent manner . After successful finish of event Business team was deeply satisfied with IT support , large commendations followed with information on how beneficial new app was .

At times even though things are very obvious , we know that every thing is under control but same need to be communicated . In other times the simple communication may not work , we need to devise ways to comfort people , give them confidence and calm thier emotions.

CASH - Ca-re & sh-are in Life

2012-11-20T06:45:00.000-08:00

When visited home this time , A big concrete water tank was placed out side my home , I noticed my parents keep pouring water into that but no one was using it instead stray animals kept drinking from it time to time. My father told that Cow, bull , buffalo, dogs try to drink from the municipal tap near by but its mostly occupied and people chase animals away so he purchased and placed to keep a separate tank . Knowing nature of my parents , it was not much of surprise that they not only spent money for stray animals but also took it on them to keep refilling the tank throughout the day .

We have spent good amount of time in villages where entire ecosystem of survival is centered around interdependence , interdependence between every thing which is available ( and not only with our human neighbors) , of course religion and faith adds big deal into it . I have always seen my mother taking out first chapati from pan and putting it away for cow , left over from night never went into

dustbin , it was always saved with much effort for dogs or any first animal sought in morning . Lunch and dinner was not the only thing we shared with guest animals , after finishing her morning prayers she always took out handful of grain and spread it on our lawn for house sparrows and pigeons , in city now we dont have a lawn still a very small terrace serves the purpose which is still over crowded in morning with more

than 60 parrots , sparrows and pigeons.

My father used to travel few kilometers across jungles daily to reach to his office and often found injured birds ,Squirrel or other small animals which were bought back to home , cared with utmost dedication , named with love and affection and allowed to run away once they are recovered . Those who can not be saved were missed and remembered in prayers .

Sharing a piece of life did come to my parents from basics of religion but they have extended its meaning because they care , they can not stay ignored if a puppy or even a piglet is in pain. When we moved in the city , I thought all of these activities would end but they managed to continue them without any hiccups. It has been a great learning and I truly believe practicing the same will also bring greater satisfaction

Fall of poster boys

2012-11-05T00:05:00.001-08:00

Recent verdict on Rajat Gupta for proven charges of insider trading has shown us another fall of a poster boy of Consulting . After holding many high profile positions in some of the best organisations , he was probably early symbol of rising India in international power playgrounds of boardrooms. It all faded now . Satyam founder Mr Raju also faced a downfall after he confessed of doctoring books of his public listed company. The common factor between both of these poster boys are thier personal greed which didnt have any limit , in fact greed never has any limit.

Both had earned enough and were respected globally for their work and status but this was not enough for them and the next level may have looked some what difficult to achive from just means . Motivation was Quick and heavy gains which also led them to their downfall.

Its only few years when we have seen another poster boy who was not from corporate world but from sports ground fell down from his world winning status to an addict and cheater in relationshio . Tiger wood had all any one can ever imagine , a consistent champion who could not stay away from the temptations of life and created a very tangled net from himself .

All of them had built thier careers on the foundation of hard work , good education and consistent performance but at some point they started deviating from that path . Personal gains , aspirations & temptations took precedence over the discipline and code of conducts . As the satisfaction came by , they started reaching out for more and never stopped till it was too late.

Its true , the harder they come , the harder they fall.

Expanding Tricolor

2012-08-10T09:38:00.003-07:00

Time has changed and so is the world , We have come a long way from the time when we received our independence . Tricolor of India was designed to unite Indians under one flag and to be used as a common symbol accepted by everyone for a common cause - independence. The associated meaning is eternal and still lives with the legend, different colors for religious importance, growth, Sacrifice and peace . Those were the traits desperately needed during the fight for independence and post that.

All religions have to be united to fight and after the fight is won , India needed to set a fast track for new growth and peaceful coexistence in independent India was very basic right of individuals. In today’s context, I would also like expand essence of Tricolor for new India, An India who is now a leader in Asia , who is considered one of the fastest growing economy across the world and to whom entire world looks up as guiding force in many areas including democracy , Well being , cultural harmony ,Knowledge and Technology.

With 70% of population dependent on Agriculture and heaving huge area covered by greenery, India can be a flag bearer for natural ways of living and promoting organic food, nature conservation and saving the natural resources at a time where Mechanical growth has overshadowed Nature and its importance - that’s the significance of green color.

Our work, passion and interest take us across the borders of states and countries. We live in multicultural global communities and it is of utmost important to show respect and sensitivity to other cultures that’s what white symbol signifies – Cultural integration. White is harmless to any other color, if you add white to green, green will not be harmed. That’s how our integration and sensitivity should be with other cultures so that we never become harmful to someone else's heritage and culture.

Independence is gained from Many sacrifices and that’s what saffron color stands for, In today’s context such precious independence is damaged by corruption and the clear cut message for Leaders , public servants and everyone else will be renunciation of their personal desires, Be at the pinnacle of Moral conduct and ACT in the best interest of society , country and world.

That can be new expanded meaning of Legendary Tricolor - Preserve Nature, Integrate with the world and promote personal and social moral conduct

M2M Imagine

2012-07-31T05:47:00.002-07:00

Machine to Machine communication has amazing potential of connecting the world and enabling strong decision making with the help of collected data , imagine if my fridge can collect all the data as what all items are currently stored inside and what has been missing from regular schedule , how useful this data can be.

It may transfer this data to nearest super market who can then analyse requirement for entire area and organise the inventoy accordingly , subsequently the data will be availble to actual supplier.
In case TV can communicate with the bluetooth enabled fridge then whenever you are watching tv and there is an advertisement of a super market , a pop can appear on the side reminding you that there are certain items for which you may like to place order. If you are an airtel user , TV can remind you for recharge when you are watching air tel add , taking it one step further if same data collected across regions and sent to Airtel , then they would know what percentage of TV audience are already thier customer and what are not.

Similarly the Possibilities with healthcare and patient monitoring are unlimited and very execiting where gadgets attached to patients can communicate with central monitoring systems of health care centers and allow a proactive response.

In last decade this might not be so realistic but in current and coming decade with bluetooth enabled deviced and sophisticated but standard operaing systems , this and much more M2M can be realised in coming future

Every One is Looking For An Idea

2012-07-21T03:27:00.002-07:00

Its not too far when we heard idea of crowdsourcing where a task can be sourced to wisdom of crowd but now organisations have taken it much beyond . Instead of tasks nowThey have been doing sourcing ideas not only inside the organisation but also from almost every one out there.

We always know that its not only our employees but also our customers and vendors who may have much better insight about our products and thier ideas can be game changers . Initially These organisations used to set up join competency and development groups with their prime customers and selected valued vendors . This alliance was managed professionaly with structured governance .

Organisation name and Symbols are only for representation purpose

Gates of their expertise are now openned to the imaginations of entire world , It started with firms like Dell inviting ideas on thier sites to help expert customer provide tips and suggestions to others for resolving issues with thier products.

Ideasourcing has taken a new shape where companies are asking how thier future product should behave , what should be key features . Technology firms like SAP have gathered thousands of ideas from SAP experts across the globe . Product like salesforce are much more Agile in implementing these new ideas to upcoming releases . even FMCG companies like P & G have come up with unique ways to collaborate with thier vendors in new areas , which can create amazing synergies , some one with good idea but no infrastructure and experience can leverage on proven expertise of P & G to materialise his ideas and it will be a win win scenario.

Today entire world is a fertile land where every one can now plant their ideas and emerging ecosystem of Customer , producer , suppliers will ensure to nurture the best ones .

Facebook Friends

2012-07-18T05:29:00.002-07:00

So now we have almost entire social circle including friends and families are available in FB . all of them see what we are updating on FB and respond to it , depending on that we have following scenarios

1. Friends who check all the updates by all people - There are very enthusiastic folks who check updates posted by everyone in their circle . Obviously they have internet connectivity across the clock from home / office , school and they are curious about whatever is going around .

2. Friends who check all the updates by selected people : - These are the users interested only in a very close circle which may mostly contain best freinds , Girl friends , boy friends and family members . They are interested in whatever their close ones doing over the net.

3. Friends who check selected the updates by all people :- These users are obviously more interested in topics of discussions than the individuals themselves , they may be interested in their alma mater , native place , a particular organisation , certain hobbies or activities .

4. Friends who check selected the updates by selected people :- These are busy set of users who have interest in limited activities from selected set of people . Such users may belong to middle to high management level or mid career executives who are just balancing the act between family and demanding work environment

Coordination - A key Skill

2012-07-12T04:21:00.001-07:00

In some of the projects which heavily involved multiple vendors , it becomes really difficult to coordinate across teams / organisations and get the needed results . I have seen people getting frusrated and escalating things to higher ups mentioning we are not getting support / Response . As we work on these large and complex engagement models , coordination takes the front seat .

I thin it is almost an art to coordinate and get the desired response , People may have different tricks to do it . One of the tricks I have seen is aggressive attack on someone with shifting entire responsbility to him , this almost forces other person to write a fitting reply immediately . As we will agree , this is definitely not the correct way to coordinate and expect response.

I remember one of my manager used to take long time in writing mails , initially I was a bit annoyed but when I helped him in drafting some mails , I realised when he writes an email , he also takes some time thinking whether it will generate some kind of response , if yes then what and for how the discussion will look like further. In shorts he ensured his mails are meaning full with clear message and generate response.

There can not be one way to do this but we all need to find our ways to get going.

Alone but not lonely

2012-06-19T05:34:00.003-07:00

Now a days when I step into City center U station of Munich to catch my train for office , the scene is pretty obvious , hundreds of commuters and everyone is looking down at his smart phones with intense concentration . catching up with office emails , checking profile updates , watching movies , browsing through songs , reading e books and what not.

Smartphones have not only given a new power to human fingertips but have also done this with grand style , users just love to see things happning at slightest movement of finger hence quite obsessed with these gadgets . In many cases folks who are standing alone in the platform are involved in various activtities over hand sets and very well connected with their buddies at the other side but whats more funny is even when we are in group , then also standard operating procedure is to stay busy with your phone , stay aloof to the real folks standaing beside you and submerge yourself in virtual world

It seems we have to improvise the old saying "Men is a social animal" , now its "Men is a social networking animal" . Today one wants to be left alone with his smart device and social networking sites and in those sites he is busy connecting with others ignoring real people around him

The Inheritance (Good Vs Bad)

2012-02-28T01:26:00.000-08:00

I was wondering what happens when some leader leaves his organization for a new leader to take over , what happens when highly successful organisation like Apple , Microsoft , Infosys changed thier leadership where organisations were doing extremely well , product and service innovation was good and customer and market had lots of trust in the future of organisations .

The new leaders definitely had advantage where most of the things are running on autopilot and all they have to do is to meeti thier customers , take positive feedbacks like "Keep up the good work" and after that they can devote larger chunk of their time creating future vision and exploring new avenues for the organisations and thats exactly what market and customer (and employees) is expecting from them to take the organisation at the next level.

On the extereme opposite side there are desperate cases of leadership changes where existing leader has not been able to control the damage and the organisation is been handed over to a new leader expecting total turn around and exponential improvements.

Most of the time leadership changes will happen when organisation is in crisis , one of the example is Satyam where new leader will have a frustrated customer to face who will not listen to anything , any new plan , ideas . Over that entire market and insudtry will be looking at new leaders with an expectation of miracle . What makes it further difficult to execute plans here is highly demotivated team / employees who are no unsecured and worried about their own future .

After you ......

2011-04-15T06:02:00.000-07:00

Buddhism deals with one of the mostcoplex topic - death , and the way of doing it is very simple imagining every day as your last day and thinking what would I do if this is my last day of life today . For an entreprenuer or an executive who is running a business succession planning should be a similar afair , specially for entrepreneur it is life changing matter to leave the organization they built from scratch , so continously they need to have succession planning in thier mind , what if I leave this company today - who will be the most suitable person to run it after me . In case of family managed businesses answer to this question is crystal clear , Children are going to take over one day and a great deal of effort is spent on grooming children on thier future role from education to th ecorrect experience and mentorship . For organizations which are professionally managed , succession planning and next line leadership is the buzz word of the day and it has been there from more than couple of decades but the success of such programs is always questionable . In very few such organization we will have a clear visibility as who will be running the show after the current leader. Consider example of GE where Jeff immelt had clear step wise vision placed for 3 prospective leaders out of which Jack welch came out as clear winner , some thing similar happened in ICICI recently where 3 strong candidates were mentored for the top post . Such succession plannings brought predictability in the business and hence no knee jerk reaction in the share market when a new leader is announced about whom stakeholders dont have any idea. However it may sound easy to say that one should always be in look out for his successor when he is in top job but thats the beauty of being in top job that you probably never want to leave it ... It is as hard as thinking about end of life ...

Abandon

2011-03-16T07:42:00.001-07:00

One should abondon yesterdays bread winner before one really wants to let alone before one has to. - Drucker

Drucker quoted it so strongly decades back and it seems to be true irrespective of time and context , organizations and individuals need to come out of their comfort zone a little earlier and start looking out for next big thing , the problem is if they dont do that willingly at early stage then after some time they will be forced by changing business environment to abondon exiting belief and adopt new and then they will have little or no time to react , infact entire approch will be reactive and no space for creatvity and pilot runs.

Abandon the way you work : In todays dynamic (yet vibrant) business environment , organizations need to ask continously what will be the next way of working . They can not keep working on same set of business processes because technology is injecting changes into processes every now and then and significant number of disruptive ones.

We need to constantly think about new way of working and abondon old ones. for example Even before there is need or question of cost advantage we need to evaluate cloud computing.
In fact in my opinion Abandoning itself may not be as beneficial as the process of thinking in this direction which will help you visulaize new and improved ways of doing things.

Project Management - what not to do

2011-02-27T23:36:00.000-08:00

A new manager is sent to save a project which is showing red in all its SLAs and KPIs , team is all burnt up taking heat from Customer , client and top management , people are working overt time but something has gone out of hand , may be some wrong decisions , may be a heavy work inflow because of some upgrade / roll out which has lead to mounting backlog and a tired and
demoralised team . Management is keen on getting things back on track , they are looking for a super hero to save the project , they do a head hunting and bring a "Manager" who has proven his worth in the past ( well at least in his resume) , all eyes are set on him and he is feeling trapped under pressure cooker .
If I am that manager , what would I not do

1) Don't ask for too many new dash board / Reports : I may have a way in which I understand things , I may have learnt and built priorities in my previous projects to resolve such situations . So when I come to this land where existing reports , terms , KPIs are nothing but Greek and Latin to me . I may not understand the reports , I may not find the data which I am looking for and I immediate temptation is to walk in to the team leads , module leads and tell them to create some more dashboards , which I think is relevant and flash necessary information . Now imagine this is a team which is already slogging and I may have added to their frustration . More reports mean taking away a little more productive time from their schedule and filling little more dissatisfaction .

2) Don't jump into decision : Just after my arrival , I start making decisions , changing team structure , setting new target for people . Its not that I am doing it out of my random thought . I have good experience in such projects and some of these things have worked in past for me so I think it will work here too . A team hates manager who takes decision without getting
himself involved in the situation , all projects have different grounds and so different ground realities . My past experience can be perfectly the right thinkg to do but it will be much better to apply it after knowledge of environment and context , the biggest factor ignored most of the time is the ecosystem of team . I am desperate to get results but then it is not a war front .

3) Build consensus rather then imposing decisions : Before I enter into team , the team is already under leadership of some one else . Existing organizations may have ways to take decisions , it may be a good possibility that previous manager made decision on his own but if a new manager does it , that may slightly difficult for team . The best way is to have consensus driven decision making , If I have valuable inputs , I am sure team will understand provided I have supporting arguments to convince

Goodness in grievance

2010-07-18T22:48:00.000-07:00

Mahabharata ended and Pandava reclaimed the glory which they deserved , It was time for Sri Krishna to go back to his Kingdom so he asked his aunt Kunti , is there anything you want ? What esle I can do for my loved pandva's ? Kunti's response to this question was very astonishing , she said oh lord I want that more problems should come to our lifebecause whenever we have been into trouble we have remembered you with utmost sincereity , we have called upon you for help and guidance and you have always appeared to show उस the path in troubled waters. If we are in trouble that would meen being constantly in toubh with you , thinkig of you and your belessed presenece.
Kunti is attitued towards problems and grievance in her life is not very common otherwise , that is because normally when challenged by difficulties of life we are toobusy in fighting with them to notice what kind of changes they are bringing to us , I am not saying these changes are always good but certainly there are lots of positives in such situations. Bad times are the real groomers of any individuals and some of the most admired people could do wonders because they faced bad times , some of the greatest innovations of human history are from the period of world war.

Changing (BA)asics

2010-03-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

Business Analyst is supposed to bridge the gap between business users and technical solution provider by using the business domain knowledge and technology understanding.
As per international institute of busyness analysis, “The Business Analysis Professional is responsible for requirements development and requirements management. Specifically, the Business Analysis Professional elicits, analyzes, validates and documents business,
organizational and/or operational requirements. Solutions are not predetermined by the Business Analysis Professional, but are driven solely by the requirements of the business. Solutions often include a systems development component, but may also consist of process improvement or organizational change. “
This traditional definition for role of a BA is accurate for customized application developments where some needed to help customer understand his requirement , document it and explain to technical team for developing application. In current IT project landscape there are many ways to address a business problem and hence role of BA is changing with broader set of responsibilities

Package Implementation : Packages are off the shelf component which provide standard set of solution for a particular business function ( with minimum development effort) so in such projects the role of BA changes to Business process Analyst and even business process re-engineering. BA will perform "AS-IS" and "TO-BE" process analysis and then help technical consultants to customize wherever needed.
Support Projects : For support projects BA will handle level 2 and level 3 support for an application where his job would be to resolve functional queries posted by end users. He may also be involved with application developers for bug fixing and other maintenance related issues.
Reporting projects : One of core responsibility of BA is process large data and derive conclusion from it, reporting or data warehouse projects focus on this strength where a BA needs to provide reports as needed by business.

Freedom

2010-02-26T02:28:00.000-08:00

In his classic Zahir paulo coelho makes an statement "absolute freedom doesn’t exist; what does exist is the freedom to choose anything you like and then commit yourself to that decision" something similar to what Geeta proclaims in very beginning When Arjuna faces confusion over fighting and killing of own family members and looked for help from Krishna , Even before Krishna starts revealing anything he makes it very clear , " Arjuna I will not take decision on your behalf , it is you who will have to take decision and then that decision will be your responsibility , the ownership of that decision will be with you if you think that some one else will take decision on your behalf and you will be spared from the burden of consequences , thats not happening"
This is what freedom in this world means , one can not sit as a victim because one is associated with its surrounding , family , country. These are emotional associations like Arjuna was associated with his brothers , wives , mother , cousins etc so even though in the beginning of battle he is devastated and thinks of renunciation to attain liberation or complete freedom but we all know that he would have not been able to sustain this. Imagine the scene when Arjuna leaves the battle without fighting , their would have been joy on the side of Kaurava's with sheer excitement they would have eliminated rest of the pandava's within few days , What would Arjun do then ? some one who can not see his teachers and uncles in pain would have seen dead bodies of his real brothers , was he so detached with the world that he could have still continued with his meditation .

I doubt if that would have been the case , instead we would have seen another Arjuna - the destroyer force , who would have again picked up his gandiv and hunted down Duryodhan and company in revenge. That's the reasons Krishna asked him to take a decision considering what his duty is (Karma Yoga ) .

Hence it seems to me that the best way of utilising your freedom is to choose what you consider is right , and stand by it with all might. You are free to choose what do you want but you are not free from choices as long as you are surviving in the society , choices have to made at every step . Let no one make those choices for you , people may help but can not take decision on your behalf because the only way to be happy is to know you have complete authority over choice , it is you who has chosen this path and it is you who will finish it .

The Bottom line of Business

2010-02-22T02:05:00.000-08:00

Over the time again and again philosophers have dwelt into the question , what’s the purpose of business and answers have varied to cover almost every dimension from economic growth to value creation for its stakeholder and beyond. The greatest management guru of current time Peter Drucker mentions

“Business exists to supply goods and services to customers, rather than to supply jobs to workers and managers, or even dividends to stockholders. Profit is not the explanation, cause, or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but rather the test of their validity” – Peter Drucker

As per Drucker business identifies the need of the value creation for a particular segment of people and creates that value, if your business is making profit that just validates your creation of value for your customer. So there is something larger which is purpose of business , profit creation may not just be validity test ( as Drucker mentions ) but definitely be an integral part of it however there are other people like John Renesch who have put a very strong support for greater purpose of business

"Corporations are human-made organisms, associations of human beings. To see this association as having one solitary purpose and responsibility, to grow only in economic terms, is such an extreme view that implosions like what happened to Enron, WorldCom and other corporate collapses will become more and more commonplace." -- John Renesch

John has hit the profit creation part of business too hard, taking specific examples like Enron and Worldcom. Same sentiments are shared by James C Collins in his book “Built to last” mentioning that maximizing profit has not been the dominating force or primary objective of visionary companies, yes they seek profit but they are equally guided by core ideology – core values and sense of purpose beyond just making money. Even though we can never undermine the bottom lines for any business yet we have sufficient reason to believe that this can never be an ultimate goal of business. If we go back and find out reasons of starting of several organization we would come across passion for technology, innovation, identification of improvement and value creation, making things better and faster as some of the key reasons which may include something as personal as working for self of being once own master.

Anu Agha of Thermax sums it well "We survive by breathing but we can't say we live to breathe. Likewise, making money is very important for a business to survive, but money alone cannot be the reason for business to exist".
Whatever is the objective of business, profits can not be negated but why do we need profit? If a firm wants to sell some product why can not it provide just by covering its operational and capital expense without taking any extra profit, this much should be enough for sustaining any organization but will that be enough for growth as well? Can it enable value creation and innovation?

Making IT a Rat RACE

2010-02-18T00:15:00.000-08:00

in 2006 I was part of a team presenting proposal to new customer , after presentation and few questions customer asked whether we can committ that same resource will be handling his project for first 3 years ( which was the initial time frame of entire contract) , delivery manager answered very tactfully that Indian IT scene is very dynamic and growing at fast pace so people here move up in 3 years from one role to other hence it will not be possible to committ . That was the case few years back , conmpanies were offering promotions and hikes without giving much consideration to qualification , age or relevant experience . The main reason was growing size of teams and hence some one had to be given management job to handle others .

2007 onwards Infosys and other companies had grown upto one lakh and now it was not possible to keep the same rate of promotion going on so they used a new policy of mandatory certification every year to slow down promotions , recently they added another policy initiative called iRACE ( Infosys roles and career) which is bound to prolong the time in which an average employee is promoted , it may also deepen the hierarchy from previous grade system ( A to E) to new number system ( 1 to 8 ) with addition of some more roles like "Project lead" or "technical leads" which were not there initially.

Even though this is a standard practice with international service and product organization companies like SAP, Google , IBM to promote people after they have spent sufficient time in team and organization , at times it takes a decade to become a project manager . But this was more because of flatter structure followed by these organizations .
The kind of initiative proposed by Infosys may not go down well with employees specially in a situation where for almost 2 years they have been working without incerements and pormotions, some of the rival firms have taken a upside appoach with declaring new increments and promotions to compensate .

Post Sales Service Strategy for Consumer Appliances Industry

2010-02-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

This article gathers information and insight into current strategies and key objective in post sales area. I have divided the strategies followed by consumer manufactures into 4 parts

1) Customer Delight: With a focus on customer touch point and empowering customers for gaining better value and satisfaction from products and services. This will also contain strategy development for entire customer relation management practice.
2) Streamlining support processes: All the internal processes which provide support to customer service have been kept under support processes. With current economic environment and for better customer experience, it is extremely important to stream line support processes to gain maximum efficiency
3) Better Market coverage: Continuous product innovation also demands expansion of relevant services to the areas where products will be launched. Organizations are also determined to expand its service centers by various channels.
4) Common processes: These processes are common across all of the above three areas and used in all.

Customer Delight:
Organizations are continuously working for enhancing the customer experience in the areas of post sales support and services. One of the important outcomes being certification offered by Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA) for providing superior technical support and services

Predictable service delivery: With the help of excellence in operation companies would be able to provide services which give predictability to client resulting minimum distortion in their daily life. This predictability ranges from assurance of data security to the timely delivery of products and parts.

Standard and global customer interaction processes: The Key factor for predictability in services will be developing standard process maps for global operations which will ensure similar customer experience world wide.

Customer Education: Organizations have been reaching out to customers and educating them to gain maximum value out of products. Some companies offer customer self repair processes to empower customers to fix their products at their own convenience. One leading organization recently launched Power To Change campaign that encourages personal computer users around the world to make behavioral changes in support of the environment.

Streamlining and Cost Optimization of support processes:
For Repair parts forecasts, pricing, product portfolio, introductions, rollovers, competitive response, and supply in an integrated way to enable risk management of business plans at a worldwide level.

Co creation of value with Outsourcing: Developing an operating model based on sourcing strategies which can provide quality product and services at optimum cost. This will require managing interface with international vendors and developing a process leadership in partners to bring them to the same level of efficiency where manufacturer functions.

Better Management of channel partners and service support centers: It remains a key goal for all global players to better manage these partners across the globe as they are face for end customer.

Developing and sustaining Eco friendly practices: Players have been working towards reducing the impact on environment from last 50 years now which include developing more eco friendly products as well as creating better recycling and product disposal Practices.

Market coverage:

At one side companies have to penetrate further for providing services to existing products on the other side it also keeps its focus towards developing service strategies for new products

More Service Options for existing products: Provide customer more convenience in terms of preferred location , mode of shopping/replacing/repairing products : Dial-A-Cartridge service, which enables customers to order any part through a toll-free number as and when they have run out of supplies. The part can be delivered to the customer within hours of placing the order, at their door-step.

Developing service strategies for new products: Companies have to push themselves to become a leader in product innovation across the segments hence it becomes bed stone for success of any product to have a strong service network which can fulfill all requirements related to repair and parts replenishment for end customers.