Certainties & Serendipities Blog Feed

How your attitude impacts your career growth?

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:52:01 GMT

Pratibha Devegowda, who was my colleague at iGATE, asked in LinkedIn, the relation between one's attitude and career growth. With a decade and a half of working experience, I can say that, its one's attitude that drives their professional growth either up or down, more than their qualifications. As I was commenting in LinkedIn, I took a step back and thought what drives that attitude. This blog post is the answer of that question.

I believe, your attitude manifests your world view. In this post I elaborate on my world view, how it shapes my attitude and its effect on my professional growth.

My mental model of life can be summarised as 'its a non-zero sum game'.

Without going into the details of the game theory (of which I don't know much), this world view translates as:
1. It is a game, so prepare hard but play smarter. Days of preparation, which no one sees, precedes hours of play which everyone witness. Your preparation, or its absence, comes out in the open sooner or later.
2. Since it is a game, you will loose few to win others. Loosing is okay as long as you prepared well and played well. Your enjoyment shouldn't just depend on the outcome.
3. Though it is a game, it is also a non-zero sum game. The world and life is large enough for you to win without being nasty. You can win playing as a gentleman.

This mental model and beliefs form core of my living. So my attitude in life, I don't split life into professional and personal, reflects this. Of course there may be aberrations every now and then, but these are few.

With that said, let me now describe how this impacts my professonal career, which was the question by Pratibha.

Because the world is big enough, opportunities abound; they are not limited within a company, geography or domain. In these sixteen years, I have lived in Chennai, Brussels, Bangalore and now in Delhi (and travelled on short term to few other cities). None is similar to other - in language spoken, climate, infrastructure and tendency of people. I have worked as an employee as well as a consultant. Mostly I've worked with executives. I was able get all of these variety of experience because 'the world is my playground'; and the enriching experience reinforces the open minded attitude.
Moving around with this attitude aid me in building long-term relationships from people from different background. Relationships are important for success. Some opened new doors for me, some took the liberty to tap me on the head when pride gets there, some lend me their ears to vent my feelings. Overall, they have provided a balanced perspective.
It also means sometimes others took credit for my work or grabbed opportunities that belonged to me. I don't stand by silently when that happens, and it hurts when these happen. It's also emotionally draining to deal with such nasty people. But because of the world-view that I have, I quickly come to grounds and concentrate on the next opportunity.
Often times, it also leads me to risky projects. Though I have failed in few occasions, grand success in others compensate such embarrassments.

In conclusion, my world-view and the attitude have lead me through a path of rich professional experience and from where I am standing, I can say, it has been a joyful journey.

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Notes from 'Steve Jobs'

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:35:47 GMT

My brother-in-law gifted me 'Steve Jobs' by Walter Isaacson, owing to my love for everything Apple. I can't tell you why I couldn't put the book down before completing it - is it my curiosity about Steve Jobs or the easy-to-read style of the book. Either way, it was a fascinating read.

Enough is already written about the book, so I'm not attempting to write a review of the book. Rather I present here those points I noted from the book. These are not word-to-word highlights but my understanding and interpretations:

On Creating Products

That he is a genius is proved beyond a doubt by disrupting not just his primary industry but seven different industries; and not one smash hit but many others even until his death;
He empowered his customers by taking away features rather than giving them boatload of features. They loved him for that. He proved his mantra, 'things often lead to the opposites';
He not only created new markets, but created new type of customers - evangelists. His idea was to create products that his customers will go on rave about, that their friends will feel stupid not to own those products.

On Marketing

I have read a lot about Apple & Steve Jobs but never read about their marketing principles set out at the initial days of the company by Mike Markkula. It goes like this:

1) Empathy : an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: we will truly understand their needs better than any other company
2) Focus : In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities
3) Impute : People do judge a book by its cover. We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.

If there is anything that CEOs and companies want to learn from Apple or Steve Jobs, it should be these principles. Not his idiosyncrasies.

On Company Development

Despite his big blown ego, he didn't want Apple to be only about him. He wanted to build a company that will out-last him. Media overhyped his eccentricities but didn't do justice to his ability to develop a company. Here is my view of range of factors he displayed in building Apple:

Leadership models: He had wide range of leadership style. He wasn't 'nasty and demeaning' boss to everyone. He expected that if you are passionate about your idea, then you should defend it even if the boss dismisses it.
Hiring: He said,

'A' players hire 'A' players. But 'B' players hire 'C' players so that they can feel superior. Soon you got a 'bozo explosion' in your company.

In the pretext of cost cutting, he didn't hire B & C players. He had the knack to seduce the best to join his team.

Succession: He didn't say, 'when I'm gone, world will return to dark ages.' Rather, he ensured a proper succession was in place and groomed his successor well to take over from him. I admire him for it. How many founders / CEOs are doing that?
Do people matter?: Yes, he did hire 'A' players and avoided 'bozo explosion'. But when he was unceremoniously thrown out of Apple, it had the same people. But they couldn't produce what Steve Jobs produced. So people matter, but leadership matter more.
He didn't buy companies rather improved supply chain: With all the money that he had, he could've bought all his rivals. But he marched on with a single focus of building aesthetically pleasing and 'just works' products.

On Personal Life

Living in India, all that I know about his life is through this book and other news media. So I'm not going to pass any judgement. Enough to say, his life is a quintessential Hollywood movie - given for adoption at birth, raised in a middle-class family, dropped out of college, hit a jackpot and became a millionaire before thirty but went into obscurity only to come out to change the world forever, managed to find love both in personal and professional life and importantly was lucky enough to live out his passion to the last minute. Tell me, who would't want to be Steve Jobs?

Disclaimer: Book link is an affiliate link

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Creativity - Alchemy or Science?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:11:04 GMT

Insights from the interview:
1. If a pilot would announce, "I'm the most creative pilot, you would grab your bags and leave";
2. Thinking is expensive metabolically, which means most of the decisions are automatic. What is interesting is what drives that automatic decisions;
3. P&G has a strong corporate culture with strong individuals. In most corporates, either one dominates.

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Common Traps In Getting Meaningful Feedback

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:56:25 GMT

If obtaining feedback is essential, it is even more critical to avoid common traps associated with getting that feedback. Here are some of the common traps¹, I have encountered:

Composition of team

Since government functions based on rank and class, a meeting will inevitably have dead-weights. They have no intention of providing any useful feedback. They are there just because there were asked to. They are harmless. But there is a set of people who can derail any hope of having a meaningful discussions. They are the Pseudo-Experts¹. Not only most of their talk will be useless, they will hold you prisoner to their expertise. Handling them will require all the emotional and psychological strength that you can muster.

Hijacked objectives

Another trap is that a feedback meeting is pulled back into a brainstorming session. Members start to discuss ideas that were left out, or come up with new ideas where much time had already been spent to arrive at the current solution. Most often these hijacks are unintentional, but sometimes it's done to subvert the project. Unintentional diversions can be graciously handled, while the later has to be handled diplomatically, only with the support of the client.

Delegation to lower level (non-decision-makers)

Those who are in-charge of providing feedback do this in the pretext of being 'too-busy'. The lower level resources won't have the authority to take any decisions draining your enthusiasm for the project rather quickly. You need to bring this to the notice of project sponsers as quickly as possible.

These are the top three traps I have witenessed. What are the traps you have witnessed?

As in the earlier post, I'm limiting this to a government setup. ↩
Pseudo-Expert: Someone who once successfully wrote a 'Hello World' in Java and thus believe he has become an expert in software engineering. ↩

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How The Damn Google Spoiled My Career

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:11:04 GMT

Usually I'm not an egotist. So please bear with me as you read the next para. There is a reason for it.

My math score was consistently above 95% through school. I even scored 100% in Engineering Mathematics in undergraduate Engineering. In the final year of Engineering college, I wrote computer programs, both in C & Basic, for seven projects, including mine. When I started my career, I knew most of the API commands of Visual Basic by heart that I could program without referring to a manual. When I moved to Windows Programming, I had to refer to manuals but the instances were minimal. Even as late as 2003, I could program without referring to manuals.

Then Google came in¹.

There were, of course, search engines before Google. But search results weren't precise. Add to it, the Internet wasn't ubiquitous. But by 2003, Internet was available everywhere, all the time, even in India. And Google was God's gift! It gave you the exact answer for the question in your mind. Amidst zillions of web-pages, the possibility that you could locate the page that had your answer, was nothing less than a miracle. That miracle was the beginning of rotting of my career.

I was advised by my friends that remembering all the commands is a waste of memory. The prevailing idea, then, was that you knew it or you knew who knew it. That 'who-knew-it' was Google. She² knew everything. In the beginning, I searched even those commands and algorithms I knew well, just to test Google's capabilities. As confidence in Google's results grew, I chose to forget inessentials.

Seven year later, I'm shocked by the consequence of that choice. I can't commit to memory even the simple programming concepts like list comprehension in Python. It is as if my memory is rejecting it saying, 'I'll not store it; go google it."

The effect got aggravated by ever increasing computing power in handheld devices. As a kid, I used to go along with my father for grocery shopping. I was not as good as my father in doing fractions but I could do it. Even as adult I was good at math(I already boasted about that, didn't I?). As more and more computing power was cramped into mobile devices, I used them in the beginning for calculations that involved multiple steps, remembering intermediate results. Slowly, similar to how my brain got complacent towards programming skills, it showed the same signs towards math. It continually said, 'go use your mobile, leave me alone." The metamorphosis was gradual, but after seven years the impact is telling.

Recently, I have become an independent consultant. One of the tasks expected of me is to evaluate proposals and other estimates. The IT parts are piece of cake, but I just simply can't bring my mind to evaluate estimations and quotes. I am not able to do even simple math (like fractions and sum of large numbers). Since I can't evaluate the important part of the proposal - financials, I become mute spectator at the crucial part of the business strategies.

On one side, my programming productivity is down because I have to look-up most of the commands, for which I have to be connected to Internet. Combining that with the fact that I'm loosing my ability to do math, the future is scary.

So my advice to the next generation is, don't sacrifice your memory at the alter of computing devices and internet. I'm trying to take back from the altar-fire whatever I could.

I mean Google came into my frame of reference only by 2003. ↩
Don't ask me why Google is female. That is a story for another day. ↩

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How To Get The Feedback That You Deserve

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:11:04 GMT

Obtaining feedback is critical to designing products¹ that stand the test of time. But getting meaningful feedback isn't easy. If it is tough in a corporate environment, it is even more difficult within Government setup².

So how can you get the best feedback?

Interestingly, most of the necessary activities happen outside the meeting room (I'm thankful to my earlier boss for demonstrating this to me time and again).

To start with, you need to know when to obtain feedback. Not too early, despite the pressure to send the 'first draft'; not too late, despite your love for perfection. Appropriate time is when it is small enough to be manageable and big enough to be relevant. As your product evolves, you need to repeat this process until the final delivery. This iterative process also gives you an early sign of future problems. If you sense any problems to come, you could still do course correction.

You should engage the client team as often as possible - mostly informally - to get their ideas about the project as well as your creation. This enables you to get insider's perspective of the project. Let us say you find out that the project is a low priority one, you can be sure that getting feedback will be of even lower priority.

If you could influence the composition of the group to provide feedback, you should do it by all means. There should be an ideological resonance within the team towards the project and hence to the product, without which feedback sessions will be disastrous.

Circulate the document well in advance giving the members ample time to read and come prepared. Some people would advice to keep the group in suspense but I don't think it is a good idea. In my experience, circulating the document and engaging the members before the feedback meeting ensures better feedback during the actual meeting.

If you have executed the above steps diligently, feedback meeting should be effective. Still surprises can come from any corner. To wade through these surprises, you should designate someone as a facilitator in the meeting. The sole responsibility of the facilitator is to ensure feedback from every one is obtained and rants are controlled effectively.

At the beginning of the meeting, set specific goals for the meeting - feedback only on Table of Contents; feedback of only the process flows but not the mock-screen elements and so on. Give the participants a structure to think and provide feedback. Our ancestors have already proved that horses with blinders run faster and on track. It will be the duty of the facilitator to ensure that the blinders are on throughout the meeting.

Given to itself, meetings have a way of turning into chatter rooms. I have also witnessed feedback meetings morph into review meetings of other projects of the clients, because they want to take advantage of the presence of the members. Since it is your meeting, it is your responsibility to steer the meeting back into track. As situation may permit, go and stand in the front. If available utilize the board. That is a proven way to take control of the meeting (another point which was emphatically proven by Mahendra again and again).

An important activity that gets left out is the follow-up. Follow-up is not limited to sending the minutes; but also introspecting what went right and what went wrong, if possible with few of the client members. This is a great enabler for successive meetings turning into success.

Now it is your turn. Tell me - via twitter, email, gplus - what else do you do to get the best feedback that you deserve?

Image by: HikingArtist

This is applicable to design of every type of products - mock screens, process re-engineering, RFP creations and so on. ↩
Though most of this discussion will be true in corporate world, I'm limiting this to a Government setup. ↩

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Customer Service Is Sales

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:34:11 GMT

Flipkart, the pioneering e-Commerce store in India, just delivered last of the four books that I had ordered. This is the seventy-eighth book they are delivering to me, in the past three years. I could boast that I am a loyal customer; but I couldn't have been one without their exemplary service. If you thought, I am getting a special service because I'm a long-term customer, you are in for a surprise - they don't even have a loyalty program. I have been their customer all these years, only because their service is consistently superior.

Flipkart is not the first of the e-commerce stores in India. I used to be a customer of Infibeam for about a year. They had a loyalty program and given my book purchasing habits, I joined that. All was well until they had to cancel an order. At first, the delivery was delayed by ten days. That ten days was stretched few more times. Eventually the order got cancelled. But the amount for that cancelled order did not reflect in my account. At first I thought it was an oversight. It took me relentless follow-up for two months to get the refund. I was furious that, a) they didn't have the inventory details b) they took time to inform about their inability c) they took even more time to refund the amount. I decided to look for alternatives.

I asked on twitter for options and narain informed about Flipkart. When I started with them they were small. Not this "India's startup success story". I proceeded with caution, but at every interaction my trust increased a little bit more. Not that there weren't any problems. Of about thirty orders I have placed, they had to cancel two books. On both occasions, they informed about the cancellation and the amount was credited to my account on time. Another time, there were two books of the same title - one with a CD and another without a CD and I had ordered the one without a CD, a representative called me to confirm the order before delivery.

Recently they introduced electronic items, thirty day refund policy and cash-on-delivery payment model. I ordered Toy Story movie for my son. They shipped DVD of a wrong region. When I informed them, they picked it up free of cost. And the amount was credited into my account immediately.

When the trust is high, I could overlook a mistake or two. Isn't it?

It is not just Flipkart which is getting the e-commerce right. I have been using ZoomIn for quite sometime and they too are fantastic. The range of products that they have is ever increasing. I've been able to impress my family members with their photographic products - photo albums, mugs, calendars and like. Some of them are so impressed that they have become their repeat customers.

FirstCry is another e-commerce store on the right track, though they are relatively new.

E-commerce was once the 'new-thing'. Now it is a competitive market. You can't win just with low price, discounts and loyalty cards. May be these gimmicks will get customers to try your product or service. But its the service delivery that will convert the try-outs into loyal customers. Conventional management teaches that customer service starts after sales. Its no more true in the electronic world.

Customer service starts as soon as a web page is served. And it continues through product search, cart management, order processing, delivery and feedback handling. Customers expect appropriate communication at every stage. And the experience has to be consistent as the orders are repeated.

You may change any of the components of the process, but that shouldn't affect my experience. For example, over the years, Flipkart redesigned their website, introduced wish-lists, added electronic items, started own delivery network and so on. But none of that affected my experience. I still get the products delivered at home at the date mentioned¹.

Will I switch to a competitor in the future? May be. But for that to happen, Flipkart has to get their act wrong as well as the competitor has to beat them in service.

Image by: adrianmelrose

One thing I would like Flipkart to improve is to inform the time window for a delivery; otherwise someone has to be waiting at home the whole day. ↩

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Can Companies Learn From Religions?

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:51:50 GMT

The spread of Christianity has always fascinated me. It started as an offshoot of a major but a regional religion; the initial followers were not the decision makers & influencers but the outcasts; all of them - including their leader were ridiculed as crazy; even before they could take a strong root, their leader was killed and not the least, the mighty empire of that time was against them, persecuting¹ and murdering most of them. Despite all of these odds, it spread far and wide to be the most popular religion and remains one even after 2000 years.

Now look at another popular religion². The contrast is telling. There is no founder; there is no unifying school of thought; it's polytheistic and every one is free to make a god for themselves, and few even make a god of themselves. That such an institution survived for these many years is beyond my comprehension. But it not only survived but spread over the world to be a popular religion. Beats me.

If you leave out the beliefs that separates them, most religions follow a pattern: start with an idea³, nurture the idea within a close group, build radical followers and enthusiastic evangelists simultaneously, retain the essence of the idea while spreading culturally and geographically, be relevant through generations, all the while generate enough monetary support to carry out the expansion⁴.

Isn't this the dream of CEO of every company?

Steve Jobs mastered the art of taking an idea, building a following of fanboys and generating billions of dollars of cash. Its a known fact that he achieved this with a 'strong hand'. In the religion of Apple, he is god and his followers often crusade against infidels of Microsoft and recently Google.

Then there are companies like Hubspot, which has set itself a mission of "transforming the way the world does marketing" but freed employees to choose their way of achieving the mission.

So there are parallels in the corporate world to the way religions have taken wings. It may be worthwhile, to look at how these religions achieved their goals and cross-pollinate the corporate world.

Point relevant to the present discussion is that early Christians had strong conviction of their beliefs that they risked their lives; whether it's right or wrong is irrelevant. ↩
I'm limiting the discussion to Christianity and Hinduism. I'm born and brought up in a Christian family, so I am well versed with its believes, history and importantly it's culture. Secondly, I grew up in a predominantly Hindu community, hence I'm aware of its history. I'm not familiar to this extent with other religions. ↩
Most of the religions have a founder, but like Judaism and Hinduism there may not be one. It may just be the life style of a community. ↩
Vatican and Thirupathi are the richest religious places in the world. ↩

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Documenting Your Decisions

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:43:00 GMT

It may come in as a surprise, but there is a peripheral benefit of working in a government setup, which is that you encounter lot of intelligent and useful ideas¹.

One such idea was to document the context of a decision. It came from Mr R. Bandyopadhyay, ex-secretary of Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

When you encounter a situation where you need to decide, you may discuss with your buddies, analyze (mostly mentally), decide and move on. If you have a habit of writing a journal, you may note the decision you made. But you don't write down the details of the situation, choices considered, point of view of these choices, assumptions considered in favor of a decision². These details of the decision are lost.

You may ask, why does it matter?

Well, a decision is meaningful only within the constrains in which it was made. When those constrains change, the decision certainly appear useless, sometimes even foolish. If you have documented the context then it is just an adjustment of the decision; otherwise you have to go through the process of decision making all over again³.

Another long-term benefit is your decision making process improves considerably, thus increasing chances of better decisions in the future.

Let me tell you some of the ways in which I have been using this:

I'm a retail and an occasional investor. I do as much through job as I could do to check details of the company before I invest⁴. However, the stock market is such that many-times price of the stock go lower than my purchasing price. Before I started noting down the context of the purchasing decision, I use to get nervous about the loss and would struggle to decide if I should sell and cut my loss. The decision was solely based on the current market price. But after I started practicing this idea, I evaluate the situation based on the assumptions I had made and if any of these assumptions and expectations were wrong I adjust the position accordingly.

Additionally, because I could go back and compare notes, my investing decisions have improved too.

Having seen the benefit of this idea, I am trying to implement this in other areas too. Try it and let me know if you find it helpful.

Choices, Image by: Orin Zebest

Ideas abound in government setup. They fail in execution. ↩
Refer SODAS method of problem solving. ↩
In some cases, it is better to have a fresh look at the situation. ↩
I may be called by some as value investor. ↩

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Will A SOPA Like Protest Succeed In India?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:59:32 GMT

SOPA is dead, at least for now. Thanks to nudging by popular internet figures like Tim O'Reilly, Paul Graham, many constituents called or faxed their representatives. Ultimately the protest forced the bill to be withdrawn. Unlike the Occupy Wall Street, SOPA protest was largely online, yet it achieved it's objective.

But can this success be replicated elsewhere, especially in India³? After all she is the largest democracy in the world and the number of Internet users² is increasing rapidly.

Despite the optimism of many, I'm not so sure that such protests will be a success in India.

I can't think of a single mass movement, in the recent past, that actually changed the stand of the government. Talk about two recent such mass movements: Telangana and Anti-Corruption Movement. Mind you, these people didn't stop with their tweets, likes and blogs; they took their protests to streets. Still, did they achieve their objective?¹

If such street protests didn't succeed what chance does an online protest has?

I put forth below arguments in favor of my hypothesis:

It is not easy to reach representatives as like in the US. They stay behind many layers of human defenses like secretaries and personal aides that it is simply not possible to reach to the representative. It is of no use explaining your protests to these aides. They will simply cut you off after sometime. All of these representatives do have an official email but again, in this world of email overload, it will be a miracle if they even read these emails. Sending a fax, though, might work. But if it comes in plenty, the machine will be safely switched off.
Let's say you managed to get through all of these walls and reached the representative. And he⁴ is probably convinced too. But there is no democracy within Indian political parties. So, it doesn't matter what he as an individual representative believe; he will have to abate his position in favor of the party line and many do. And the party line is whatever that will get them votes. If that happens to be the right choice for the country, good for citizens; if not, they are not even sorry.
Our politicians are pretty good at diffusing tensions. If they perceive that there could be a bargain that could dilute the protest they will do so. The participants will disperse after a compromise and the real goal will not be achieved. (One has to only look at the state of the above two protests that I talked about earlier).

So am I saying there is no hope for a change? Absolutely not.

In a complex system like democracy, lollapalooza effect - more than one factor leading to an outcome - is an inevitable component. That lollapalooza effect takes place in one of two situations: either the mass movement reach an avalanche momentum to throw out the political smugness or a do or die crisis erupts that forces radical changes⁵. (When both happens that is a lollapalooza too).

But its anyone's guess which protests will stimulate a lollapalooza effect.

I'm not debating the worthiness of their cause. Given the fact that they were not political gatherings and there were thousands behind these causes prove their need. ↩
In absolute numbers, India is growing in internet users; but penetration is abysmally < 10% ↩
This is of interest as support for UID is now gathering momentum in social media ↩
English isn't gender neutral, so these are just linguistic conveniences. Forgive me for it. ↩
Like what forced India to abandon its license raj and open up its economy. ↩

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