tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-319475872024-03-19T08:57:52.335+05:30prakkiSince the world is moving towards having ignorance as a point of view, I try to ensure that it does not remain as a strong point of viewPrakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-14208931156297529422011-03-14T15:51:00.008+05:302011-03-14T16:09:44.808+05:30Generalist Vs Specialists- Where should the balance be?Last week, I was car pooling with one of my colleague who works in a different department- We were generally chatting about life, work et al and he wanted to get some counseling from me on management [I don’t know how come; he suddenly assumed that I can do career counseling for him :-))]. For the sake of simplicity, let us call this person as Mr. Techie [MT in short]- MT has around 8 years of experience in the Oracle platform and he wanted to get in to management. I asked MT a simple ‘WHY’- whether he did not like Oracle or Larry Elisson or he just got bored with it. Interestingly, MT replied that liked/loved Oracle but he felt that he is not progressing well in his career and he feels that by getting in to management, this perception can go away and he can see more GROWTH. When I probed him deeper on what he means by NOT progressing well in career, he candidly told me that he gets irritated when managers GROW even though the bulk of the work is done by him or people of his ilk. So in totality, MT decided that it was worthwhile to drop his Oracle expertise or a technical career and pursue a career in management- He also wanted to check on part-time or full-time MBA degree as he felt that this will determine his success in management [There are certain management institutes which sell this very well]. He was kind-off mesmerized on the MBA thing – I strongly felt that someone would have told him that MBA is a pre-requisite for pursuing a career in management.<br /><br />If I abstract this at a higher level, it boils down to your decisions on your “path”. Why do you need a management career when you are good in technical area? Why do people flock for MBA’s when they really don’t know what is in store for management? I agree with Scott Adams again on producing more “pointy haired” bosses! Why cannot we specialize in the area where we are and not get distracted? There are certain folks who have a natural flair in management and they do well irrespective of an MBA. These are tough questions and I can understand that it is tough to go on a path with considerable self-assurance! But I also feel it is an area of improvement/challenge for IT service firms to get technical folks to do technical things for eternity. Outside of India, I have seen project managers who have 20 years of experience just doing project management or program management; I have also seen Technical folks doing coding/technical tasks for 25 years! They feel assured and secure in pursuing their line of expertise- The firm also gives them the scope to do that. Why is it not possible to do it here? The obvious reason for this is the exponential GROWTH of the industry and this has set the expectations for everyone to move up and up[irrespective of the fact whether they are capable or not- This is more relevant in management]? The key challenges from the firm side are to create a degree of security/assurance and keep the technical folks motivated in the same area/space for a longer period of time? The challenges from a individual perspective is to stay focused on the ‘path’ which is difficult with the level of distractions today [cannot imagine a dumb management boss who is more successful than the particular individual who is smart in his core area]!<br /><br />Coming back to Mr.Techie, I asked some pointed questions to him, viz.,<br />• What are your goals?<br />• Are you loving doing your work in Oracle platform?<br />• How do you know that you will love your work in management?<br />• Are you ok if you fail in management?<br />• Are you ok to move in to a generalist role from a specialist role- That’s a big sacrifice in my mind!<br />• Who told you that you need MBA to get in to management?- This is another common myth!<br />• Why don’t you do a trial and error role in management before doing your MBA?<br /><br />Mr.Techie obviously felt as if he was shaken and stirred by these questions- He got the message and figured where I was coming from! Smart boy! I specifically told him not to give any answers right away and asked him to ruminate over these set of questions before looking at part-time MBA as an option. Maybe he would have cursed himself on having car pooled with me! I guess the same is true in many sectors or many industries. Do I need to be in Sales or do I need to be in marketing? Do I need to do the lathe work in the workshop or do I need to open a new lathe shop? Do I need to do day-trading for someone or do I need to do it myself? Should I be in corporate banking or should I be in investment banking? These are definitely worthwhile pondering questions but it has to be associated with multiple ancillary questions before a decision is made.<br /><br />Just making a decision and then blaming it on others or generating self-sympathy will not work! The other good idea is to do less analysis and move along the path that life takes you and enjoy what you have got rather than aiming for something and losing your sleep.<br /><br />I also want to connect Malcolm Gladwell’s book called ‘Outliers’ where he brings in the concept of 10000 hours of work [<a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858880-2,00.html">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858880-2,00.html</a> ] - If you have done more than 10000 hours of work in a particular area, then you can actually call yourself as an expert or be successful in that area. It is not about the talent but about the 'work' that you put in that particular area. Being in the middle looks cool, but you should not do more analysis- Just enjoy the ride and stay committed!Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-31592965175304516152011-03-11T10:02:00.005+05:302011-03-11T10:08:43.971+05:30The Accidental Billionaires- The Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglzT234QwD-CRtom0PJ_WZ2TPz4-XoMN72o-ddsJjjnFvuts43wyRlSYLEXoslV2ElgelZ7ywbncO6CpLZkKXWmZ7ys7u_MA_m-MzWbwgnPiMu2GNjHx4cRdmhfDWW8kTRLCRv/s1600/accidentalbillionaires_270x402.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 215px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglzT234QwD-CRtom0PJ_WZ2TPz4-XoMN72o-ddsJjjnFvuts43wyRlSYLEXoslV2ElgelZ7ywbncO6CpLZkKXWmZ7ys7u_MA_m-MzWbwgnPiMu2GNjHx4cRdmhfDWW8kTRLCRv/s320/accidentalbillionaires_270x402.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582676595158143602" /></a><br />I was recommended this book by my neighbor, Kaushal and it proved to be awesome! Thanks Kaushal!<br />Ben Mezrich has created a fast paced documentary book that is unique in style of writing and pace; he calls it as the tale of sex, money, genius and betrayal! What a combination? I guess most of the greed in business world has some flavor of this mix in varying percentages. It will be good to create an algorithm of this based on historic research of start-ups and enterprises; we will know the exact percentages. This book is a smart chronological collection of interviews, secondary research who were involved with Mark Zuckerberg in some way or the other; this is packaged in a great story! For non-digital natives, Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking site, youngest billionaire and the youngest TIME person of the year, 2010 [<a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183_2037185-1,00.html">http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183_2037185-1,00.html</a>]. This book talks about his journey from Harvard dorm room, the vision of social networking, the concept of Facebook, the whole viral way in which it took off and finally the ruthless focus and agility that Mark brought to FB!<br />I finished it in one shot and it was a sort of déjà vu for me for multiple reasons- It is an ‘interesting’ book [stealing from Mark’s words] which was made in a movie called “the social network’.<br />The plot and the characters are very simple- Mark’s classmates in Harvard are Eduardo Saverin, Winklevoss brothers and Divya Narendra. Plus there is this legendary Sean Parker [of Napster and Plaxo fame] who acquaints Mark and influences his move from Harvard to Silicon Valley. Mark joins Harvard and he is socially awkward; the irony is hard to miss- From being a socially awkward kid, he moves on to create the biggest social network of the century and is the TIME person of the year to have 500 million users in Facebook!! Behind every great fortune, there lies a great crime- In this case; it was a prank for Mark and he went on to create the revolution. Basically Mark got rejected by a girl and he went on hacking the entire Harvard directory [all pictures] and created a website called ‘face mash’. Face Mash concept was simple- People could vote the hottest girls in the campus and maybe some of the girls faces would be put next to farm animals so that people can vote which one is attractive. Within 72 hours, the whole voting of girls became viral and facemash had logged 22K votes- This created a huge sensation within Harvard and Mark was featured in the Harvard Crimson primarily for even suggesting the fact that he wanted to compare girls with farm animals and of course for hacking all the pictures from the Harvard database illegally. The Harvard ad-board gave a warning and probation to Mark on this incident- The face mash was the trigger for FB and ‘Looking for, Relationship Status, Interested In’ was the genius for FB and the heart of any college experience or college life. A computer program could actually get you a date and get you laid!!<br />Simultaneously, the Winkelwoss brothers and Divya had been working on an idea called Harvard Connect later renamed as ConnectU- They wanted to finalize the last bit of programming and wanted Mark’s help to finish that. Mark listened to them fully and procrastinated them for 8 weeks and created Facebook -launched it using Eduardo Saverin’s seed money for servers. There are infinite numbers of designs for a chair but that does not mean anyone making a chair is stealing from someone else- That was Mark’s argument against Winklevoss twins law suit on stealing their idea of ConnectU.<br />Along the way, this book also gives a sneak peak on Harvard clubs, the history, tradition around it- The whole campus life is interesting and the unpredictable mind of Mark. He used the Harvard Connect idea; he used Saverin’s seed money, used Sean Parker’s contact to get the initial VC money all along when he was GROWING up from 21 years!! The focus and ruthlessness of Mark comes in the angle where he chopped off Eduardo, Sean Parker in a clinical manner. Mark’s behavior was best illustrated by his business card- ‘I’m CEO-Bitch’<br />PS: Winklevoss brothers won the lawsuit and they settled at USD 65 Mn. Eduardo has an impending lawsuit and his name as a cofounder of FB is reinstatedPrakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-71148333559054931432011-01-23T11:57:00.003+05:302011-01-23T12:03:52.039+05:30Super Sad True Love Story- Gary Shteyngart<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo3hkI28AqtZMzipptBRcga7kKg7oQld4oKOw7kL3jNdX0vk_lWWBhKZbmnPNkYvFMlgoRx_lGcukOsbCGjEDXe0qRBAwbXlKE83N0uzr_xlWp2pEyFePPcmRx87gb1L8fIEn5/s1600/July1220101123ammugshteyngart.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 285px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo3hkI28AqtZMzipptBRcga7kKg7oQld4oKOw7kL3jNdX0vk_lWWBhKZbmnPNkYvFMlgoRx_lGcukOsbCGjEDXe0qRBAwbXlKE83N0uzr_xlWp2pEyFePPcmRx87gb1L8fIEn5/s320/July1220101123ammugshteyngart.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565265316800904898" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_6HErRYOITqrwfTU2XOETLcNkG0DxCg-fU-3U5EhjqdA9zPKH-6A4gg956zTopCbdmubwfmvGWEgznHmIg073bfZaASHGcpyNl1lNhObj9-mJ5ffIe-yl-B2Dx7Hxi-pBjWib/s1600/images.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 183px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_6HErRYOITqrwfTU2XOETLcNkG0DxCg-fU-3U5EhjqdA9zPKH-6A4gg956zTopCbdmubwfmvGWEgznHmIg073bfZaASHGcpyNl1lNhObj9-mJ5ffIe-yl-B2Dx7Hxi-pBjWib/s320/images.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565265315564588018" /></a><br />Interesting title and an interesting author and an interesting canvas- I was intrigued by its title, read its review at Amazon and picked it up instantly. The author of this book is Gary Shteyngart-His other popular works are Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante’s handbook.<br /><br />The story revolves around multiple themes but it is predominantly a combination of satire and love story set up in future- Gary spins a satire on the future of our world by taking what is happening currently (capitalism, US dominance, US functional literacy/illiteracy, social networking, gadgets, live-streaming, manual books etc) and elaborating it to a future dystopian state. In that mix, he has cleverly interspersed a love story in an unique manner. I had a feeling that some parts of this book were auto-biographical but cannot validate that with Gary!<br /><br />We can call this book in whatever genre as I am unable to slot it - That’s what makes it more curious and fun to read! I can call this as a futuristic book, as a romantic book in a different age or a simple satire that extends the current trends in a bizarre manner! The whole story revolves around Lenny Abrahmov and Eunice Park who are the chief protoganists. Lenny, aged 39 works in ‘Post Human Services’ that sells immortality to High Net Worth Individuals and Eunice, aged 24 is a Korean immigrant in the US who has graduated with a major in ‘Images’ and minor in ‘Assertiveness’. Lenny falls for Eunice’s youth and tries everything to ensure that he gets her love. Eunice at the same time, quite aware of Lenny’s age takes him for purely transactional reasons- basically to get a space in his apartment in NY city. Gary has also portrayed a different picture of America in the future where there is an impending war at Venezuela, ARA (American Restorative Authority) taking control and the Chinese Yuan taking over the dollar. Saudi Arabia, Norway and China are the potential takers of America [!]- This was well emphasized in the beginning of the book when Lenny, an American citizen enters US and is being questioned by the Otter!<br /><br />The whole story is narrated between Lenny’s dairies and Eunice’s IM or social emails to her set of people- So it is almost all the events unfolding from the lens of Lenny and Eunice with two extremes of communication. Lenny on the normal manual diary manner and Eunice on the social networking platform. This style was different and I loved it! Lenny speaks through his dairies which are philosophical or auto-biographical- His point based methodology on life is dreadful and funny; For instance, his Point 3 on ‘loving Eunice’ ,Point 1 on ‘working hard’ for his boss, Joshie and Point 5 on ‘being nice to parents’ bring back the nerd mentality and lack of social maturity in which the world is heading at! Some of the abbreviations used by Eunice in regular conversations are again hilarious viz., TIMATOV (Think I am about to openly vomit), JK (just kidding), TMS (temp motion sickness). There is a clear tinge of immigrant mentality strewn across both Lenny and Eunice character- The part where both of them meet their parents are written very well. The way different cultures especially in a different country collides are clearly seen.<br /><br /><br />There is also this device called, “apparat” that streams real time data about everything right from credit rating, ranking, worthiness, social interactions with others, likeability etc. This apparat has got a “Rate Me Plus” feature which can rate on multiple parameters on a real-time basis [***-ability 700/800, personality 800/800, */*/* preference 1/3/2]. I was really scared to enter in the dystopian world of Gary but at the time could not resist the fact that there are certain aspects aligning in that manner if you look at the current trends. Personality score depends on how ‘extro’ the person is- and the apparat streams images, multimedia thingy on your childhood, runs on the stuff that the person has downloaded and comes with a score. This is going to be reality for sure- I am sure Mark Zuckerberg must be thinking of it already and we will be using it in the near future!<br /><br />Lenny and Eunice conversations are really funny- How they respect their families? The old carrot and stick method of parenting? The aspect of Lenny liking ‘physical’ books (I use the term physical here) in a world where your social group thinks that you are ‘nerd’ if you read physical books. Lenny likes to read ‘physical’ books and his rendering/reading of Tolstoy is made fun by Eunice to her friend, Precious Pony. It is not just the fact about Lenny reading the books but the SMELL of the books that irritate the next generation! I don’t know what can Tuna-brain and nerd face, Lenny do to avoid the smell! The conversations between Eunice and her friend Grillbitch a.k.a Precious Pony are page turners- It typically happens in the Global Teens account (facebook in future!)! The way Eunice starts loving Lenny and her ambiguities with Lenny start coming out clearly in her conversations- The satire is visibly coming out there! Fashion Trends are moving in a different direction in the future; (Onionskin jeans)- I don’t want to give a sneak peek here as it will spoil the party when you read the book. <br /><br />Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book even though I did not like the ending that much- It could have been better! I loved Gary’s style of writing! Folks who are in social media and are closely following the trends will love this book and the satire!Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-59369092263345208332011-01-09T22:13:00.001+05:302011-01-09T22:17:12.864+05:30MEE-ROI (Meeting ROI)One of my “tangential” ideas- I hope I can patent this. If anyone has directions on how to patent an idea, please it to me over email. Okay here is the idea for the product!<br /><br />In the IT services industry, there is a term called, “Global Delivery Model” which is basically doing the IT services in delivery locations which are cost optimal (leveraging the labor arbitrage) and giving a seamless support services for the customer in a 24x7 model. This is also called, “follow the sun” approach. So in a global delivery model, IT service firms will have teams located at multiple locations across the globe servicing the customer. In this context, communication and collaboration are of paramount importance. So how do we communicate? There is a conference bridge number and there is a calendar- We send the invite based on everyone’s convenient time, join the call, discuss things (it can be anything related to customer services or the firm), jot down MOM (minutes of the meeting) and associate action items with respective owners. Every day, millions of conference calls happen across the globe between customers, vendors and suppliers.<br /><br />Given this backdrop, here comes my idea- It is actually a product. I have named it as MEEROI in short for Meeting-ROI. This product features are as follows:<br />• Speech to Text conversion<br />• Jot down Action items and owners<br />• Automated email to the group based on the bridge id or passcode<br />• Calculate the number of people who have joined the call based on the beep and their names<br />• Populate their base compensation rate by the hour and calculate the burn rate in $$ for that particular meeting/conference call<br />• Finally give the figure for the “$$” value of the meetings/conference calls<br /><br />Of course this is the tangible part and there are intangible aspects for a conference call for a meeting. Purists will argue that this will defy the purpose of a meeting or a conference call. That is beyond the scope of this product on how and where to use it. I think, it is important to understand how much we “spend” on meetings. I am not advocating actions or decisions based on this data- I am just talking purely from a base-lining perspective as today we spend insane amount of time on “meetings”.<br /><br />This product can also capture “value added” time and “non value added” time based on how we define value and an associated cost. The cool thing is the fact that we know before-hand how much we are going to burn and that’s a great part!<br /><br />The target market for this product to begin with would be the IT services firm which engage in servicing off-shoring and outsourcing work. Over time, it can be combined with big telecommunication majors as one of the freebie. This product is also good for all firms that are looking at cutting costs on just meetings!<br /><br />I don’t know whether this product exists today but this idea occurred to me and I am blogging it. If it does not exist, this blog post is my copy right! If it does exist, please ignore this post.Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-30032376992339217652011-01-03T22:14:00.004+05:302011-01-04T21:04:59.310+05:30Running and Chasing your Goals!There is an inherent philosophy in RUNNING and lot of people have written books around it [ quite notable is the one written by Haruki Murakami which is more of a memoir and the title of the book is, “what I talk about when I talk about RUNNING”]. Somerset Maugham has told that in every shave, there is a philosophy and so does Haruki Murakami, who says that there is a philosophy in doing mundane activity in a diligent manner. (On a side note, Haruki Murakami sold his own jazz bar lock, stock and barrel and took to serious writing; to keep himself fit, he took to active running- He is author of several books that have been translated in to 42 languages and he has participated in almost all of the international marathons across the world )<br /><br />I don’t have the courage or the diligence to write a book on “running” but I certainly wanted to write a blogpost on this for a while- So here it is! In my usual style, I love, “connecting the dots” and “associating” things- My association right now for this blog post will be on “running” and “chasing our goals” in life, career choices/decisions!!<br /><br />Haruki Murakami says that a serious runner ought to cover 6 miles a week, 6 days a week- This amounts to around 36 miles a week or 156 miles a month which is apparently his standard for serious running. I definitely don’t fit in the category of a “serious runner” today but certainly will be able to do it someday as I am aspiring for a marathon sometime. It is definitely there in my “bucket list” to cover atleast 10-15 world marathons in my life time and my inspiration is Haruki Murakami quite naturally!<br /><br />I have been running for around a year for at least 45 minutes to 60 minutes on alternate days - Going by the standard for serious runners which is around 156 miles a month; any normal kid will tell that I am nowhere near serious running. I will reach this golden standard someday.<br /><br />Coming to the central theme of this blogpost, when you run in a treadmill say for 1 hour or more, you get these mind-related breaks at 10 mins, 20 mins, 30 mins and at 45 mins respectively. It can vary from individuals to individuals but I do get these mind-breaks at every variation.<br /><br />What I mean by mind-breaks are the following:<br /><ul><li>Stop the treadmill and walk… </li><li>Decrease the speed?</li><li>This music sucks and why don’t we have separate musicians for runners!! </li><li>Why are you taking this pain? </li><li>What do I need to do in work differently? </li><li>Void thoughts- Blank vaccum state </li><li>I need to change my shoes- Nike air is not that great! </li><li>I can spend this time in something meaningful? </li><li>This is really boring as running does not make you cool? </li><li>Depending on the day, some other “weird” thoughts comeby which I cannot categorize here but definitely valid ones! :-)</li></ul><p>These mind-breaks take a cyclical route every 10 mins, 20 mins, 30 mins and 45 mins- The urge to stop the treadmill is very serious and most of the times, I stop around 48-50 minutes. There have been somedays where I have pushed beyond 1 hour.<br /><br />As anyone who has ran, the key to running is the synchronization between lung, heart, mind and your legs- This synchronization can be broken very easily by mind-breaks. Mind plays a major role in running and after 45 minutes, you tend to become a sort of “robot” where you will have the pain; but still you can go on and on without much of hassles. You will be sort of robotized and You will be in the “zone” during that time and your mind will be in a sort of blank state but you got to keep at it to close it. I think this is where I draw the parallel between “chasing your goals”- Most of the times, we tend to chase like how we tend to run. Before we reach the “zone” state in running, we give up and the same state more or less applies to our goals as well. I am not generalizing this for everything but most of the time, this is similar. The goals then fizzle out because reaching 90% of your goals is actually easy; it’s the last 10% that will kill you. For finishing the last 10%, you have to be in the “zone” state. The urge to stop or break away before reaching the “zone” is tremendous. You can actually correlate this to some goal that you had in mind and have actually completed to your satisfaction [you don’t need to be a runner to visualize the parallel]. <strong><em>Do you agree? </em></strong><br /><br />There have been numerous occasions where I have been pushed by my mind to stop after 1 hour of continual running [even after reaching the zone]. I feel the same is applicable for all of our goals; big or small. We reach to around 90% of our goals but have been pushed by mind either to abort it or sort of half-close it and call it as full closure. This does not give you the full satisfaction as you know internally that you have not achieved it to the fullest satisfaction. The joy of completing a goal to your satisfaction is awesome and this feeling will never keep your goals open-ended. Similarly, I am sure the joy of completing a marathon or a half marathon is a great feeling or even a run for fixed amount of time (based on your capability)- And it’s like talking with your mind and taking control of it.<br /><br />I have always found that we complete 90% of a goal that has been set by ourselves and then in the last 10%, we give up. This is exactly the scenario in running which is amply evident than any other sport because in running, you set the goals for yourself. You are never in competition in running- The competition is yourself! The same is applicable for your goals!<br /><br /><strong><em>Think about it? </em></strong></p><p>Disclaimer PS: If a serious runner reads my blog, s/he will sure have different perspective. This is a perspective of a rookie runner who is aspiring for serious running!<br /><br /></p>Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-1102957409502030712010-12-24T20:51:00.006+05:302010-12-24T22:05:34.422+05:30People Always Leave People!<p>In the IT services industry, one of the key metric is “attrition” and most of the firms have their own formula for calculating it. In simple terms, it’s the number of people who have left the firm in a particular period by total number of people that that firm has in that particular period. It is usually expressed in percentages and it gets featured in quarterly earnings for public listed firms and for private firms, it is given as a MBO to the senior management to curb it if the number goes high. Customers track this and highlight it as a concern if it goes beyond an acceptable level.<br /><br />There is always a conflict between professional managers and HR on who should own this metric. In some firms, it’s a shared responsibility, in some; it comes under the ambit of managers KRA. Again, I don’t want to get in to this dynamics -That’s a separate blog by itself. I strongly believe that people management falls under of ambit of professional managers and they must do whatever it takes to retain people or “talent”.<br /><br />After having retained a lot of people and have lost a lot of people, I wanted to blog about this for a long time!<br /><br />Why do people leave firms? What can be the reasons? Is it for?</p><ul><li>Better pay</li><li>Better Lifestyle</li><li>Better job profile or a challenging role</li><li>Better boss who has basic human values</li><li>Higher Education</li><li>Marriage</li><li>Start on their own!<br /></li></ul><p>Most of the times, I believe that, “people always people” and they do not cite this as a single most reason during exit interviews but it is more implicit. When I mean people, it refers to their immediate boss most of the times and some times, the leadership team in general.<br /><br />Given this view, how do we tackle this? There are again multiple ways to achieve “nirvana” here but we will attempt on couple of pointers or hints as this is an evolving area [feel free to add your comments after reading especially in this area]:</p><ul><li>Behave like a “manager”- I am smiling while I am typing this but this is something I think is missing most of the times. Most of the promoted managers don’t even know what they should do as “managers”. The field of management is so extensive that they don’t even want to read about it. They believe that they have got the title and hence they are capable! They have got the title because they did well in an individual/team capacity most of the times and due to that, they got elevated to handle a team. GE had clearly defined this in 4 E’s long back [Energy, Ability to Energize, Edge, and Ability to Execute]</li><li>Your role is different from your personality- You as a manager are in a “role” and it is not a role given by a firm to “please” everyone. It’s a role that has clear result areas and objectives- So you have to ensure that your “core” personality does not conflict with this role. For example: Your core personality does not like arguments or conflicts whereas in your role, you need to do that day in and day out. The ability to differentiate this is very critical as it benefits your team. Your team will get suffocated if your core soft personality comes in the way of the role or vice-versa.</li><li>Solve Problems for your team; don’t delegate and expect to get solved- If a problem does not get solved, chances are that your team is looking up to you to get your hands dirty. If you think you also cannot solve it, then don’t route the blame to the team. Essentially eliminate the “blame game”- You are being a manager to take the blame and not to route it! Very obvious point but do you do it?</li><li>You are under constant observation by your team- This is the hard truth of being a manager! If you are uncomfortable on this aspect, you should tend to remain as an individual contributor. You need to bring dignity to the role- Any degree of prejudice or nepotism or any default practice done by you is observed, recorded, archived and will be retrieved by your team for future use!</li><li>Respect from your team comes because of your actions and not because of your title- Again everyone understands this but few track this consciously!</li><li>Respect your word- Some times manager’s commit something to an individual team member or a group of team members and it’s important to respect that word! I have seen managers committing something to solve something in the short term or for the immediate term and forget about it. This jeopardizes the role once again.</li><li>Focus on being a good human being yourself- This encompasses your personal “value compass” and the shared values like Empathy, Compassion, and Integrity etc.</li><li>Courage and Passion- This is important as these two are inter-related and very contagious. You need to have courage to encourage “dissent” in your meetings rather than surrounding with yes-men. The passion that I am referring to is not your personal passion- You might be heavily interested in photography or painting but you have a day job; so it might be worthwhile to inject some passion in your day job so that you can make it joyful for you and others!</li><li>Teach a new thing for yourself and for your team- They will remember you for this for eternity!</li><li>Read, Read and Read- Again the common excuse that I hear on this are:Lack of time<br />-No interest to read<br />-What do I gain by reading?<br />-I have around 10 years of experience- So why read? I know? [this is the know-it-all syndrome]<br />-What to read? When to start? Which book? Management or Non-Management?<br />I think reading anything helps you to kick-start the habit and also get in to the “connecting the dots” and “association” trait which is very important for aspiring leaders.<br /></li></ul><p>I can go on and on for managers but if we understand some of these practical aspects, we can and will retain people and talent. Even if they leave, they will come back for you! Again, we are not attempting a recipe here but the above factors can be taken in to consideration while you are in the “retention” business.<br /><br />Given the advent of millenial’s entering the workforce and globalization creating more options for everyone, it has become a necessity to retain good people/talent. Fortunately, there is no shortcut for this and meticulous understanding and diligence is required on people management!<br /><br />Would love to hear your views and perspectives on this!</p>Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-51278660776133656722010-12-19T23:08:00.008+05:302010-12-19T23:18:34.614+05:30Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhidT4Tl-fWX5Y1KJtvLxM9j70waJoEEjVxOFEMnW1B_Chr3WoPpKWExUCUekuE4yIyR8lX6y3Jfc8ZE77mYHf5g6Pjvu2G3XvN4pvZ8mEqgbrLe5HXEy3DbrM5CjahJEUvYgn1/s1600/Rooftop_Running_the_Books.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5552451198082331666" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 221px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhidT4Tl-fWX5Y1KJtvLxM9j70waJoEEjVxOFEMnW1B_Chr3WoPpKWExUCUekuE4yIyR8lX6y3Jfc8ZE77mYHf5g6Pjvu2G3XvN4pvZ8mEqgbrLe5HXEy3DbrM5CjahJEUvYgn1/s320/Rooftop_Running_the_Books.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>While I was surfing books in a book website, I came across, “Running the books- The adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian”. I loved the cover of this book- It has the face of Avi Steinberg [My assumption] on a collage of book stamps of lending date and submission date. Somehow it reminded me of my college and MBA days where I have never read any book within the return date and always paid some penalty or the other. The cover itself is so creative- full marks to whoever thought of it as it blew my mind! Mindblowing- I don’t know how a kindle can replicate this joy of seeing this cover! I also liked the manner in which the pages were attached- It was as if a journal is made in to a book! Too cool.<br /><br />Now coming to the book itself, Avi Steinberg writing is humorous, intense, and impressive and he takes a conscious attempt to keep the boundaries! It’s a thin red line and there is always a temptation to talk about the author’s life in addition to his role as a prison librarian and his protagonists in the prison. I think that line has been clearly drawn and it is visible only when you look at it deeply- Otherwise it flows seamlessly. That way, Avi has done a fantastic job.<br /><br />The crux of the book is simple- Avi takes up the job of a prison librarian in a tough Boston prison from being an obituary writer and the people he encounters in the prison- pimps, psycho-killers, ex-stripper who has estranged her son, drug pedellars, gangsters etc; their desires, their idiosyncracies, their perspective on things more importantly on books especially reading and writing! The stark contrast is the fact that a prison librarian like himself genuinely tries to impart reading, writing skills to the society outcasts- Is’nt contradictory or counter-intuitive. Well, you got to read this to understand where it is leading. The protagonists are fairly intense- A pimp who is looking at writing his biography and taking tips from Avi, An ex-stripper who has estranged her son who himself is an inmate and tries to take Avi’s help in meeting her son in the prison, A thug who aspires to be a world popular chef- In fact he wants to name his show as, “Thug Sizzle” and ofcourse the whole tension between inmates, prison officers and the staff [people like Avi]. The staff; people like Avi have to maintain a balance between inmates and prison officers. He cannot be completely compassionate or empathetic to the inmates as it spoils the prison equilibrium but at the same time, he has to comply to his human values of compassion! Avi also gets to know these societal outcasts so intimately that he unconsciously helps them or takes sides which by itself is crossing the line from a prison rule book!! That dilemma is very well captured especially in the areas where Avi helps out Chudney [character who aspires for Thug Sizzle] or the C.C.Too Sweet [Pimp who wants to write his biography] or Jessica [ex-stripper leaving her son estranged]. The character of C.C.Too Sweet is very colourful and his theories are reasonably hilarious- Too Sweet feels that pimps are the kings when it comes to rhetoric and the fact that Malcolm X was able to move people, large crowds, use knowledge from books comes from the aspect that he can be possibly be a pimp!! :-)) This is again C.C. Too Sweet theory- Form him, everything originated from pimping which is nothing but street swagger!!<br /><br />This is a great book for book lovers as the writing is kept at a level where it does not bore with multiple characters in the prison and the layers are peeled off one by one like an onion! I would recommend this book to aspiring writers to get a feel of multiple tracks.<br /><br />Essentially there are 3 tracks in the book: <div><div><ul><br /><li>There is this track on the prison characters, their aspirations and how Avi enables or facilitates them in a small manner. His dilemma on taking sides!</li><br /><li>There is this track on Avi’s observation how the prison is run and how the library is run- The whole aspect of inmates communicating through “kites” [short letters kept in the books for others] and inmates writing poignant poems and summary in the writing classes. The aspect of Protective Custody unit which is the outcasts of the outcasts and how inmates view them as prisoners within the same prison! The whole concept of time inside a prison- I have always read this, “I am doing time”. Time means doing with your hands [a repetitive task, organizing books, cleaning things et al]- There is a difference between doing time and being in prison. Also, you can wish “Happy “anything”” for the inmates as there is no concept of festivities! There is also a small track on his orthodox Jewish background; I wanted to explore some of those topics and I have made a note of it. Very Interesting.</li><br /><li>Finally the track where it converges to the ending of the book which in my mind was fabulous!! </li></ul><p>I was constantly wondering how Avi is going to end the book as the onion peels were coming again and again- Its tough to create an abrupt end but Avi’s accidental meeting of a prison inmate in a common place like Boston public library where that inmate narrates Avi’s joke back to him: It goes this way: </p><div><em>A merchant bought a sack of prunes from his competitor. Opening the sack, he saw the prunes had begun to rot. He went back to the seller and demanded his money back. The seller refused and the two men went to see the rabbi to settle their dispute. The rabbi sat down at a table between the two men and emptied the sack in front of them. Then he put on his glasses, and without saying a word, he went to work, slowly and carefully tasting one prune after another and each time shaking his head, After some time had passed, the plaintiff finally spoke up, “So rabbi, what do you think? The rabbi, who was about to consume the last of the prunes, looked up and replied sharply: “Why are you fellows wasting my time? What do you think I am- a prune expert?<br /></em><br />The inmate emphasized this joke in the context of the fact that in this life, you don’t have all the answers!<br /><br />This was a poetic ending to this book whereby Avi clearly dissects each of the prison inmate life history, their aspirations and why things were happening in a certain manner. I LOVED this ending and there was no other better way to end this book. I have become a complete fan of Avi Steinberg because of his ending!<br /><br />PS: This reminded me of the movie, “Secret Window” where Johnny Depp [writer] emphasizes on ending of the book! </div></div></div></div>Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-74260925186212563912010-12-17T21:48:00.004+05:302010-12-23T11:07:48.967+05:30DEATH<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIJ6RuGwa6_Wfg7krlaUg6ICc0XSf5TUe7ks4skdHttApqdo0sbS5yo-VxHjSHlfdlLxkIrkpucDloz-hx9C7y42CeLjqXdZ7GXkoPId2SOrK87Pfint3f6xz1vkUrGb_8o1pR/s1600/Death.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 149px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5551688594282950946" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIJ6RuGwa6_Wfg7krlaUg6ICc0XSf5TUe7ks4skdHttApqdo0sbS5yo-VxHjSHlfdlLxkIrkpucDloz-hx9C7y42CeLjqXdZ7GXkoPId2SOrK87Pfint3f6xz1vkUrGb_8o1pR/s320/Death.png" /></a><br /><br /><div>Disclaimer- This is not a philosophical post but something that recently happened to me and I am just articulating those thoughts!<br /><br />DEATH- DELIVERY OF EXTREME AGONY TO OTHER HUMANS!!- This is how I expand “death” given the limited words that I know in English language! But more importantly, death is something that nobody has conquered so far and cannot conquer in our life time. It is so easy to see, visualize, understand how, why death happens everywhere but when it happens in your family or in your close vicinity you come to terms with this beast! It is so sudden that everyone is dumbstruck and mind numbing- It is like as if you are hanging in air after having a controlled life so long. All your controls are gone the moment you hear the news of death of someone who is closer to you!<br /><br />You feel that you have achieved everything but cannot achieve anything in front of death coming to you. Given this lingering thought, I have some philosophical questions [ofcourse introspective]: </div><ul><li>Why do we have super-ego’s when someday it is going to be crushed and turned in to ashes?</li><li>Why do we hurt others when they will be engulfed someday? </li><li>Why do we want to amass so much when it is of no value while one is facing death? </li><li>Why do we do anything and everything to acquire a title or a designation when death does not care to wait for that relevant title?</li><li>Why are we killing ourselves before getting killed? That is the million dollar question that came to my mind when I encountered death of one of my close family. The shock is sudden and very prevalent that it numbs the mind for some time and you start thinking about the statement, “Life happens when you are busy with other things”. Today a lot of stress happens in work place and outside of work place and I think it’s not worth the trouble! A lot of marriages are broken because time is a precious commodity and people don’t have it. Is it all necessary?<br /></li></ul><p>Long back, I saw one hallmark card in the US that had a sky and a lake in the front of the card- The image on the front card was very serene and the second portion said, “the best things in life are not things”. Thought-provoking by itself, we never tend to enjoy leisure and always try to be in a race which we think we have won but in the end have lost it completely. Lot of folks have argued with me that this line of thinking is taken by “losers”. :-)). Don't get me wrong- I am not advocating to be non-ambitious and take leisure seriously as we will be perishing one day. Thats not my point and thats the skeptical line of thinking after reading this post. My point is to balance our ambitions with basic goodness of life. Well, at the end of day, you lose something and gain something- I think whatever you earn in life is meaningless if you don’t have “goodwill”. Rest of your earnings are useless and are of no value- The only thing that will remain is the “goodness” of your heart and how much of difference you have made to others in terms of any little action. It can be financial, educational, social but we need to make a start-Time is ticking and we all will have this “delivery” of death and there will not be any effort or schedule over-run with this!!<br /><br />I started this blog on a pessimistic note and am ending with an optimistic note stating that all of us have limited time and it’s important to help others in need in whatever way one can. Let’s bring more smiles amongst other humans as the moment will never come and we all have to contribute that bit! </p>Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-34767101980037299842010-12-13T22:30:00.005+05:302010-12-13T22:43:51.274+05:30Why "Value Thinking" is important for being innovative?I work in a IT service firm and there is a continual expectation from our customers on “innovation”. The target audience are customers who outsource or offshore IT, business arena of work to save costs, leverage value and focus on their “core” area. We all know this very well and this is the story of outsourcing in general- Let’s not get there as that will fill another 20 pages! :-)). In this blog and in this context, I am only picking a subsection which is “innovation” and that seems to be the expectation from everyone. Fair one, is’nt! When they are outsourcing millions of dollars, the expectation from them on firms to innovate is obvious, right? Even when I am paying continual $$’s for my vegetables-fruits-on-demand-service provider, I am expecting him to be innovative. Don’t ask me how but I am expecting as I am paying some $$’s. :-))<br /><br />Here is the small disconnect and the premise of my blog- All Indian and US IT firms can definitely innovate on process and technology but to innovate on customers business requires “value thinking”. IT firms have “operations/delivery” folks and “relationship/engagement” folks – These folks seamlessly integrate the fabric of delivering services to the customer expectations. The disconnect on innovation comes specifically on “value thinking” as you move upwards to innovate on customer’s business, “changed mindset” from the service providers/customers and “courage” [required leadership trait]. All these three are interconnected and it’s important to join these three so that we get the holistic picture!<br /><br />Let me expand on “innovation”- I agree with everyone on customers valuing business result or outcome of applied innovation but the issue here again is related to courage. IT service firms core business is system integration, technology integration, consulting on aligning business and technology- IT Service firm’s core business is not necessarily always improving the “customer business” [atleast from a balance sheet perspective]. Firm X (IT Service Firm) may win a large outsourcing contract with a healthcare giant- Firm X cannot set up new hospitals or create a revolutionary way of handling physicians or create cutting edge surgeries or attract patients/payers for that healthcare giant under innovation [that is the core business model for healthcare giant]- Here is what Firm X can do under “innovation”:<br /><ul><li>Can definitely innovate on “process” and “technology” as they are experts in that area and they are contracted for that!· </li><li>Can definitely brain storm with the healthcare giant on their areas of business innovation- 5 W’s[Who, What, When, Why, Where] and 1 H [How] should be triggered for Firm X’s involvement in business innovation? Most of the business innovation will have some IT component to it and Firm X can facilitate that IT part for that business innovation and be a part of the healthcare giant’s innovation eco system. This definitely requires “time” and “energy” from the healthcare giant and its not a one-way street. Companies like Walmart, TESCO, P&G have spent enough time with suppliers to enable them in their innovation eco-system so that they can reap benefits.</li><li>Firm X also need to baseline the current state of process and technology innovation [which is a “hygiene factor”] and sign off on the customer expectations and prepare a road map of future expectations with the healthcare giant on innovation. This has to talk about time and energy required from both parties etc. Now without all these, just talking about innovation either with the customer or internally does not make sense and it will join the league of over-abused jargons in management or leadership! We definitely don’t want Scott Adams have “innovation” in the buzzword bingo contest where “Wally” records these from the pointy haired boss!! </li></ul><p>I believe the traits required for “value thinking” for a customer is as follows:</p><ol><li>Keep on reading on the area that you are working- It can be analyst reports, It can be google alerts on your area, It can be books etc. Because at the end of the day, all are inter-connected and the ability of the leader to connect the dots become super critical in an age where there is no information asymmetry. Reading and Connecting the dots is an important trait- For example, hypothetically speaking, this healthcare giant would have created a revolutionary mechanism on pricing with payers on outcomes or would have created a unique way of doing surgery. How do we leverage Firm X internal knowledge or expertise to enable healthcare giant’s business innovation? Can we explore that? It can be a sensitive area but internally we should be able to connect the dots. Can we do an innovation introduction as outlined by “Michael Schrage”: <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/2010/11/when-your-best-customers-reall.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29">http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/2010/11/when-your-best-customers-reall.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29</a></li><li>Have the courage to face failure- Firm X engagement/relationship/delivery folks should go to a customer and propose something new. It can be a failure but the attempt to “challenge the status quo” has to be there in action. It should not be there to give advice to the team- it has to be there in practical demonstration. This is not a enlightenment session where the team should know how to challenge the status quo but it has to be a practical demonstration on how it is done to the team. Most of the times, we tend to have self-doubts about our approach or idea and the whole thing dies before it is presented. I define “courage” as the ability to face criticism from customer or internally and still have the confidence in your idea or approach. At the end of the day, if you present 10 approaches to customer and if 3 are treated as failure, you still emerge at 70% success rate on new things. That requires enormous homework, connecting the dots and courage. As you can see, all are inter-connected.</li><li>To expand further on courage, we should think of us as tiger in the mirror and not as sheeps- if we think we are sheeps infront of the customer, we will behave like one. This is a direct analogy but it is applicable- What will happen finally? Will the customer eat us? No- we have to create an impression where we are genuinely trying to do the thinking part along with the customer. And whenever you do thinking, you always have the possibility of going wrong- Its okay. Check out a tiger- Even if it makes mistakes, it does not sulk. :-) don’t know whether it is a right analogy but I somehow like the posture of a tiger.</li><li>Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish- there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. It was created by Stewart Brand in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s- On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. </li></ol><p>To summarize, the key traits for “value thinking” which is essential for innovation are:</p><ul><li>Read and connect the dots</li><li>Stay Hungry and Stay Foolish</li><li>Have the courage to face failure and challenge the status quo</li><li>Make mistakes as it indicates that we are trying rather than just order-taking</li><li>Always baseline quantitatively and involve the customer genuinely- This helps in showing improvement or progress</li></ul>Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-69112067727428492772010-11-21T20:36:00.006+05:302010-11-22T21:59:12.108+05:30A Case of Exploding Mangoes<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi8X84jWdj0VexIKGl6TZ3i6hLSuq4B8ekqmE6MqOiZOZgQaQw0Nqv-sQfCOIYweiLVbQ8nLkmP_ZxhQc7Jb00YD5ZsRa_9LCldknImfccgeHskMCCq1wPeudhyphenhyphenqbTTlBaRixw/s1600/ACOEM.png"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542411794215690482" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi8X84jWdj0VexIKGl6TZ3i6hLSuq4B8ekqmE6MqOiZOZgQaQw0Nqv-sQfCOIYweiLVbQ8nLkmP_ZxhQc7Jb00YD5ZsRa_9LCldknImfccgeHskMCCq1wPeudhyphenhyphenqbTTlBaRixw/s320/ACOEM.png" /></a><br /><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJrCO_WCGl1FQLDzH1jCxYK4mM2SucQwZF5K7hnr0zl0KHDKhB-gWEGO-cx1sblv21Er0ii5mHwfBJAiPLtRUwmcPbkn2Fli27G8qxkhXlGjCC-CslTDujOcbUSl3cbtebwISY/s1600/images.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 115px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 135px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542020067536182674" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJrCO_WCGl1FQLDzH1jCxYK4mM2SucQwZF5K7hnr0zl0KHDKhB-gWEGO-cx1sblv21Er0ii5mHwfBJAiPLtRUwmcPbkn2Fli27G8qxkhXlGjCC-CslTDujOcbUSl3cbtebwISY/s320/images.jpg" /></a><br />I bought this book for the title and the cover visual- Usually I try to buy books just based on gut feel, visuals, and some backdrop of the story. This time, the title, “A case of Exploding Mangoes (ACOEM)” killed me. Needless to say, I do have a prejudice for mangoes as I just cannot resist them.<br /><br />Coming to this book, Mohammed Hanif, the author of ACOEM really has exploded in the area of wit and satire. There have been numerous times where I chuckled, laughed, rolled in laughter over the choice of his words, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBPYPlhmNf09ZHWFRdWFGxMbWhcTsdDEOjTHn1q6G2PrhUoaVE1SOB2FfvJW-xqGnBgNyMDVQLoj8Wjc5KpPjGqN_F0lbntHkzY6aG1uRHuXDobINNaMT0VLAT6drvzLO6a_ue/s1600/Zia.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 104px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 102px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542020070568191314" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBPYPlhmNf09ZHWFRdWFGxMbWhcTsdDEOjTHn1q6G2PrhUoaVE1SOB2FfvJW-xqGnBgNyMDVQLoj8Wjc5KpPjGqN_F0lbntHkzY6aG1uRHuXDobINNaMT0VLAT6drvzLO6a_ue/s320/Zia.jpg" /></a>wit and the portrayal of characters.<br /><br />The plot is fairly simple- It goes off in 2 threads: One narrated by Ali Shigri, Air Force Junior Officer in the Pakistani Military where he plots to kill General Zia and avenge for his dad’s suicide and the other one is the day to day chores of General Zia, General Akhtar, ISI [Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence], Brigadier TM, First Lady, Pakistani Military, Zia’s fear of his security et al. It meets in the air crash where General Zia along with the American Ambassador, Arnold Raphel gets killed on August 17, 1988 where a crates of mangoes are placed in the C-130 aircraft. Along the way, there are numerous incidents depicting on how Americans view Pakistan as an ally in their war, Blind Zainab’s rape case, Pakistan’s First Lady suspecting on General Zia having an affair, General Beg’s Rayban glasses, insights about Pakistani military etc.<br /><br />I did not like the climax of the book as it goes off in a different tangent and the connection was never made between multiple things- Maybe Hanif wanted it that way but full kudos to the author for his satire in this debut novel. I am quite sure that context plays a major part in enjoying this novel -Folks in India and Pakistan would have seen some of these characters on media and visualizing these characters in the novel at funny encounters makes the day!<br /><br />Hanif has a gift with words, wit and satire- Let me take some pearls here from the book:<br /><br />Ali Shigri was suspected of a plot even before he committed any crime and he was subjected to torture. So when the plane crashes, he believes that there is“poetry in committing a crime after serving your sentence and punishment before crime has a sing-song quality”. :-)) I love this!!<br /><br />While Ali Shigri was tortured, the things that were going on his mind were, “ There is something about these bloody squadron leaders that make them think that if they lock you up in a cell, put their stinking mouth to your ear and shout something about your mother they can find all their answers”….What an interplay of words?<br /><br />On the medals of military folks, “ Look at the arrangement of fruit salad on a uniform shirt and you can read his whole biography. The 40th Independence Day medal. The Squadron Anniversary medal. Today-I-did-not-jerk-off medal.” :-)) :-))<br /><br />On one occasion, Hanif does not leave the Indian musical sisters as well- Lata and Asha. “ Old, fat, ugly, Indian sisters who both sing like they were teenage sex kittens- But across the country battle lines are drawn between those who like Asha and those who like Lata. Tea or Coffee? Coke or Pepsi? Maoist or Leninist? Shia or Sunni? “<br /><br />On General Akhtar’s devotion to his boss General Zia, “ This is not a ordinary 3-star devotion to a 4-star general. Theirs was a bond between two dogs stranded on a glacier, each sizing up the other, trying to decide if he should wait for his comrade to die before eating him or do away with the niceties and try to make a meal of him immediately” </div>Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-61644475175144004072010-11-21T00:17:00.004+05:302010-11-21T00:32:34.912+05:30Democracy Vs Progress<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg46wIteHbFmjua-i3PfU9CUNnqBioVcyxg1n_CvmGPa8zxdb5At8qyOUYybbNnm5OVY-M_sonQV0YbPuaFpOnTx1s4hCzuZbcRiWTOKSz-AZE_hPoYvQnxt5NrYVsEOu2yiN8w/s1600/Democracy.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5541709013566153442" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg46wIteHbFmjua-i3PfU9CUNnqBioVcyxg1n_CvmGPa8zxdb5At8qyOUYybbNnm5OVY-M_sonQV0YbPuaFpOnTx1s4hCzuZbcRiWTOKSz-AZE_hPoYvQnxt5NrYVsEOu2yiN8w/s320/Democracy.jpg" /></a>I was recently attending an AGM [Annual General Body Meeting] of my housing society- My society comprises of 1000 apartments and each apartment has got a building representative. Each building is labelled from A-Z; so its kind off a centralized-decentralized structure when it comes to maintenance et al.<br /><br />The purpose of this blog is not to enumerate about my building society but to talk about “consensus building decision making” and “how to take responsibility without authority” and whether “democracy is really good”.<br /><br />I have been to all these meetings and the key take-away is as follows:<br />• Everyone wants to make a point<br />• Everyone has an opinion about everything that they know partially, fully or none!<br />• Everyone wants to point a problem [seldom do people point a solution]<br />• Everyone feels the housing society core committee are their employees [I wonder where from this notion is coming as these are honorary jobs where core committee does not take any salary or bill by the hour]<br />• Everyone wants ROI<br />• Everyone feels that they need to push hard and feel that there are areas of improvement all the time- I am okay with this but at least the good work has to be recognized some time!<br /><br />Coming to core committee- They have a challenge to please all the owners of 1000 apartments without prejudice or conflict of interest! They have to get consensus for each and every thing; otherwise it will be labelled as dictatorial and people in India don’t like Hitler in general.<br /><br />Secondly the core committee are constantly taking responsibility without any amount of authority. This is slightly tricky because in any responsible role, you have to take a decision and if this goes wrong, you will be penalized by 1000 apartment owners and if it goes right, nobody will even acknowledge. That’s the beauty of this job. I feel this is slightly similar to the vertical-horizontal split in a typical Indian IT services firm. Indian IT services in an effort to sustain the scale; created industry based verticals and capability based horizontals. These capability based horizontals will operate on a shared service mode and someone who is in a vertical has to take responsibility without authority as s/he has to constantly collaborate with the horizontals keeping the end customer expectations in mind. Getting things done when you are NOT a boss is relatively easy in a professional set-up but in this type of honorary or public service set-up, I think it’s a nightmare!<br /><br />Finally coming to my pet peeve which is “democracy”- Is this really good for us? I feel that in the name of democracy, some of the progress is getting stunted across board. I see this in a silo-ed version for this board meeting. During my final pass out year at BITS, pilani we had T.N. Seshan [ ex- Chief Election Commissioner for India] as a speaker and he was articulating about “benign dictatorship” instead of democracy. Mr.T.N.Seshan was passionately advocating benign dictatorship for India as he wanted progress in many areas. I distinctly remember folks talking about the utopian nature of this idea and also some folks who did not understand what he was even talking about [ I was in the latter part as I never comprehended why we are talking about dictatorship when we are supposed to celebrate democracy]. There were some folks who were talking about why democracy is important for India blah, blah. After this AGM meeting, I am completely convinced of Mr.Seshan’s line of thought- I pity Mr.Manmohan Singh sometimes as he has to balance between consensus building, keeping the job, make hard decisions, tell politicians NOT to be corrupt [that is a big ask given the 2G spectrum allocation or the Mumbai Adarsh housing scandal], ensure security etc. This list is endless and progress in a democracy is a real challenge- It is definitely NOT impossible but a real hard nut to crack!<br /><br />On a tangential note, we are all fairly democratic with our better half to progress in life! Looking at this optimistically, there is progress at least in personal life if one follows true democratic principles! :-))Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-7773541520671354502010-11-13T14:32:00.012+05:302010-11-13T15:19:00.060+05:30Barack Obama’s Presentation Skills- India Trip, Nov 2010<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghHgJ4LGpEl29oVB08Sm4oB54jn41tEZO2ZCK9nASV78z7pVfJel1-tDeSvv80XcyGREaEx2_wbQUDB94u70h308NyDXTHTO3qS-sTtfcESYkA5I9ySQhX7ucnakuKdaiqrchW/s1600/09ss19.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 202px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538961266440263954" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghHgJ4LGpEl29oVB08Sm4oB54jn41tEZO2ZCK9nASV78z7pVfJel1-tDeSvv80XcyGREaEx2_wbQUDB94u70h308NyDXTHTO3qS-sTtfcESYkA5I9ySQhX7ucnakuKdaiqrchW/s320/09ss19.jpg" /></a> I am sure there must tons of coverage on what Barack Obama did at India and his Asia tour of 2010- There was considerable coverage in the India media before he arrived and after he departed. Politicians, Corporates, Institutions, Villages et al had an agenda with the Big O and vice-versa. While there is a lot of talk around Obama having an agenda for the US and how he wanted a win-win situation with us- I am not blogging those important details as there are better folks than me who would have documented that. Also there was a section of crowd that said, “now we have got attention” and another section that said, “we better get this attention as we are definitely invincible”, blah, blah- We are not entering that area as well.<br /><br />Quite interestingly, the premise of this blog is look at one sliver of Big O’s visit which was his town hall session at St.Xavier’s college at Mumbai [<a href="http://news.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/nov/07/slide-show-1-obama-visit-ask-obama-tough-questions-keep-him-on-his-toes.htm">tp://news.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/nov/07/slide-show-1-obama-visit-ask-obama-tough-questions-keep-him-on-his-toes.htm</a> ] where a lot of students were supposed to be grilling him with hard, sensitive questions. I happened to see that session in the TV and I got some valuable insights on presentation skills- I think I will be the millionth fan of Big O’s presentation skills but nevertheless wanted to record that. I know that big title, designated corporate honchos can also learn on the art of presentation through this Q & A session alone.<br /><br />Here are my observations:<br /><br />• Non-filler usage- This is an amazing skill especially when you are extempore and faced with sensitive political questions. Typically, folks use “you know”, “I mean” etc some 200 times in a 5 minute conversation- Even senior corporate honchos have this problem. Hint for their HR team: Get a communication coach for your CEO and VP’s. I have already blogged about this earlier!!<br /><br />• Connection with the audience- Usually communication coaches call this as “eye contact” but Big O has clearly crossed that part. This connection is beyond eye contact- there was an emotional angle associated with the answers of some of the questions. Its again to hard to develop this skill because this requires good amount of empathy and compassion! Both of these are in scarcity today.<br /><br />• Engaging the audience and local association- There were many times where Obama mentioned about local things at India, Gandhi etc. This brings the relevancy and also engages the audience- There is a huge plus in connecting with the culture even if it is a 30 minute conversation!<br /><br />• Assertiveness in communication- I think this is an amazing trait of Big O. The tone tells about the assertiveness on some issues!<br /><br />• Answering the questions specifically- This seems like an OBVIOUS point in a Q & A session but most of the leaders or presenters in this type of sessions don’t answer the question and beat around the bush. I won’t say Obama was perfect in this area but given his constraints he did a great job. There was a question about why Pakistan not being called a terrorist state and Obama’s answer was picture perfect- He said that Pakistan’s stability is good for India and there are extremists in Pakistan as they are in any part of the country in the world. India is on a super growth mode and an unstable Pakistan is not good for India. He also added some masala on how great Pakistan is but the key point is abstracting the question and focusing on stability which is important for India. Fair enough! From purely a ATQ [answer the question] perspective, his answers were great. From a different perspective, US wants Pakistan to be an ally and they need Afghan control in the war and they are ramping down as well. These are some underlying aspects but as I said earlier, there are enough folks who are deep in to this debate that I don’t want to join that gang with my opinion. :-)<br /><br />You can view the Youtube version here: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLapI4dQBAE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLapI4dQBAE</a><br /><br /><object style="background-image:url(http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/RLapI4dQBAE/hqdefault.jpg)" width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RLapI4dQBAE?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RLapI4dQBAE?fs=1&hl=en_US" width="480" height="295" allowScriptAccess="never" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object><br /><br />All of the above points seem very obvious and easy but I think it’s very difficult to implement on regular basis! More importantly, these are highly significant for any leader today whether s/he in business or politics.<br /><br />After I blogged this, I was curious to google about “Barack Obama’s presentation skills” and I got a whooping 96,700 results. I was bang on with my assumption of me being a millionth fan or one among the millions who likes his presentation skills.<br />I wonder how much of home work Obama does for his speeches or is it a innate talent! I would have asked that question in St.Xavier’s, Mumbai if I was present during that day!Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-75612224238915625262010-10-17T18:14:00.005+05:302010-10-17T19:01:22.991+05:30Shantaram- Book Review<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5m_sryIoKfzvLFp5IPu-iJziq8PVVoS9Ozdw4SZcgQigvSC85fQdQ-1doDO_Wtu4hxgBmpkxhxbX4ngOhkjzxn1XgE74_LHP8Kdazo10i7YCmGjRNm6Nyh_zl2KvyJAoQ4vTE/s1600/Shantaram.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 182px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5m_sryIoKfzvLFp5IPu-iJziq8PVVoS9Ozdw4SZcgQigvSC85fQdQ-1doDO_Wtu4hxgBmpkxhxbX4ngOhkjzxn1XgE74_LHP8Kdazo10i7YCmGjRNm6Nyh_zl2KvyJAoQ4vTE/s320/Shantaram.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5528995170275243170" /></a><br /><br />It’s been a while I blogged and this is the first time that I am blogging about a book- “Shantaram” by Gregory David Roberts. I read a lot of books and usually I am tempted to blog but never got the enthusiasm or energy to do- I normally move on to the next book. This book was suggested by Shareen.C [ One of my good friends who share the art of reading! ]. Initially I thought this book has something to do with self-help or as the title suggests, it is something of a philosophy/religious undertone laced book. NO ITS NOT- the title is so misleading. This is the name given by the Maharashtr-ian mother in a small village to Roberts!!<br /><br />Nevertheless, I just followed what Shareen said and bought the book- It was an amazing roller-coaster ride for 900 pages and quite sincerely I did not want the book to finish. It’s a great journey of fate, love, compassion, empathy, Mumbai- underworld, Mumbai-slums/zhopadpatti, Afghan war, Leopalds café at Colaba and Kano the bear!! I could not resist not adding “Kano” the bear and the fact that its transportation to Nariman Point was given in the last parts of the book made me laugh and think a lot!! Kano the bear was “wanted” by Mumbai policemen and Roberts was involved in transporting him from point A to point B- This whole thing seems simple but it’s too hilarious and thought provoking when you read the book. The slum dwellers were more bothered about transporting the bear safely rather than thinking about themselves- This small thing alone reflects the whole humanity piece!! This is a real-life story with great attention to detail and his journey across multiple things and what he does at multiple places- The common thread is his journey of fate and love and his ability to connect to people with compassion. Wherever he goes, his unique ability to look at humanity is something that struck me very hard- I mean we all go to multiple places and interact with multiple people but looking at humanity in this angle seemed very sincere! As Robert says in the last chapter of the book – “Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities”. This resonates with the journey and the closing credits of the book- “Human Will has the power to transform its fate and Roberts always felt that fate was unchangeable, fixed at birth- But the truth is that, whatever be the game you are in and whatever be the luck you have, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love”. This is exactly what he wanted to portray through his semi auto-biographical book!!<br /><br />For starters, there is a lot of thought-provoking ideas given by Robert in this book- If you want a ride of life irrespective of your fate, just get in and enjoy the ride with love. The author came to Mumbai after escaping from a prison at Australia and then learnt Marathi in a village at Maharashtra. That made him a “Gora” [Hindi term for foreigner] speaking Marathi at Mumbai. I am sure some of the Indian political parties will be proud and they can even use Roberts as their brand purely from a linguistic perspective!! Roberts then moved on to a zhopadpatti [hindi term for slums] to treat diseased folks with basic first aid knowledge- Understood what it takes for survival for these slum-dwellers. Then joined the Mumbai underworld gang that’s known for honor- Here there is a beautiful distinction between honor and virtue!! Here is where there is a lot of underworld philosophy that laces through the book – Things that I loved here were: The cocktail mix that all powerful men have are the fact that they are afraid and are cruel. I also particularly loved the analogy of fake passport, fake ID business to “Red Queen Contest” where Alice meets the red queen who runs incredibly fast but never seems to get anywhere. She tells Alice that in her country, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. I wonder that some-times we do the same as Red Queen in our professional life. J That is a separate blog altogether. <br /><br />For people who want to understand universe, good, evil, big bang theory- there is a good section where the Mafia don explains all of these interlacing with his perspective! Roberts then pledges his loyalty to that gang and then goes for an Afghan war and then comes back to rebuild the gang without the leader. In the gang, the key things that come back and back is the honor in which they conduct the business claiming to do “ the wrong things for the right reasons”. In the middle, finds his love [not fully able to express] in the Leopolds up-market international gang; Helps them out for various activities including helping a Californian girl escape Madam Zhou [ One who runs the biggest and kinky escort services in Mumbai- This part is an interesting twist] and then gets trapped in Arthur Road jail due to this. The whole story is set in the 80’s and there is a flurry of movement that makes one wonder whether it’s for real or not and how could one travel this journey!! Well, Gregory David Roberts has done it with love and compassion- Most importantly there is no hatred in the whole sequence which I loved the most!<br /><br />I can go on and on with this blog as I liked everything about the book and lot of phrases has inked a part of my memory- I like to take one good statement [told by the mafia folks] from the book, “Fate always gives you 2 choices- one you should take and one you should do”. I think it’s the same for this book- Every book store gives you 2 choices- one you should buy and one you should read. Howz that to end this blog?? :-))Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-67981527495469896782010-02-13T11:36:00.008+05:302010-02-13T12:56:51.970+05:30Innovation-Ideating a Product<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OYglgi3EiRM/S3ZHpvSgZrI/AAAAAAAABXQ/LfaPm7-HuXE/s1600-h/tatachem_swach01.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 125px; height: 272px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OYglgi3EiRM/S3ZHpvSgZrI/AAAAAAAABXQ/LfaPm7-HuXE/s320/tatachem_swach01.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437612382490748594" /></a><br /> <br /><br /><br />Today morning, I was reading on a mobile economical water purifier product launched by TATA by name “SWACH”- This seems to be an awesome innovation that crosses social, technological hurdles and really is revolutionary!!<br /><br />TATA Nano was path-breaking in its own way but “SWACH” has surpassed that- Research states that most of rural India lacks pure drinking water and this water purifier aims at solving that. TATA’s product pricing is going to be extremely low- maybe under Rs.1000 (<$20) and it aims at solving water-borne diseases like diarrhea, jaundice, typhoid, polio etc. <br /><br />The product claims are as follows:<br />• Replaceable filter based<br />• Filter is based on low cost natural ingredients- Rice husk ash encapsulated with nano-silver particles<br />• Requires no energy or running water to operate<br />• Purify up to 3000 litres of water after which bulb needs to be replaced<br /><br />TATA Swach is a result of collaboration between TCS Innovation Labs, TATA Chemicals and Titan- Fourteen patents have been filed for technology and the product. Aqua-guard should definitely watch out for this product!<br /><br />From an innovation perspective, this is heavily thought- provoking – we were in an innovation workshop recently and the whole notion of ideating a product to fruition seems to be fantastic. I can correlate some of those concepts when I try to visualize it for TATA Swach. On an alternate note, I do remember a HBR innovation article on break through thinking where the researchers(Trish Clifford, Renee Dye and Kevin from Mckinsey) have elaborated on thinking “inside” the box rather than outside the box. Their whole claim was attributed to the limitations (prolificacy of ideas and data slicing ) of thinking outside the box. The whole idea was to generate questions that are not too broad but are abstracted at least 3-4 levels lower than the first point- This way innovators can arrive at the right questions that can prompt organizations to create the right product. I have got permission from Trish Clifford some aspects of that article and here goes the key take-aways which are the 21 questions!!<br /><br />They have come up with 21 great questions for developing new products under these categories:<br /><br />• <strong>“De-average” buyers and users-</strong><br />1. Which customers use or purchase our product in the most unusual way?<br />2. Do any customers need vastly more or less sales and service attention than most?<br />3. For which customers are the support costs (order entry, tracking, customer- specific design) either unusually high or unusually low?<br />4. Could we still meet the needs of a significant subset of customers if we stripped 25% of the hard or soft costs out of our product?<br />5. Who spends at least 50% of our product costs to adapt it to their specific needs?<br /><br /><strong>• Examine binding constraints-</strong><br />6. What is the biggest hassle of purchasing or using our product?<br />7. What are some examples of ad hoc modifications that customers have made to our product?<br />8. For which current customers is our product least suited?<br />9. For which particular usage occasions is our product least suited?<br />10. Which customers does the industry prefer not to serve and why?<br />11. Which customers could be major users, if only we could remove one specific barrier we’ve never previously considered?<br /><br /><strong>• Explore unexpected successes-</strong><br />12. Who uses our product in ways we never expected or intended?<br />13. Who uses our product in surprisingly large quantities?<br /><br /><strong>• Imagine Perfection-</strong><br />14. How would we do things differently if we had perfect information about our buyers, usage, distribution channels, and so on?<br />15. How would our product change if it were tailored for every customer?<br /><br /><strong>• Look beyond the boundaries of our business-</strong><br />16. Who else is dealing with the same generic problem as we are but for an entirely different reason? How have they addressed it?<br />17. What major breakthroughs in efficiency or effectiveness have we made in our business that could be applied in another industry?<br />18. What information about customers and product use is created as a by-product of our business that could be key to radically improving the economics of another business?<br /><br /><strong>• Revisit the premises underlying our processes and products-</strong><br />19. Which technologies embedded in our product have changed the most since the product was last redesigned?<br />20. Which technologies underlying our production processes have changed the most since we last rebuilt our manufacturing and distribution systems?<br />21. Which customers’ needs are shifting most rapidly? What will they be in 5 years?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.tata.in/media/releases/inside.aspx?artid=TtOdcdNuSRk="></a>Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-7001051334466759982009-08-29T10:00:00.001+05:302009-08-29T10:01:30.893+05:30Data Vs InformationBusiness Intelligence has come a long way but the essence of data and information remains the same. To understand BI and Information Systems, one needs to understand the essential difference between “data” and “information”.<br /><br />I once remember having a debate with a CIO on all systems being called as “data systems” or “information systems”- I do strongly believe that it needs to be called as data systems rather than information systems. I also had a mental debate on google’s mission which is “to organize world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”- Ideally this is to organize world’s data.<br /><br />Here is my disconnect- I don’t think so, in today’s dynamic world, we can actually classify “information”. All we are doing is to classify “data” and we never know when it becomes “information”. Its extremely dynamic!<br /><br />I will illustrate with couple of examples but before going there, lets get in to the fundamental difference between data and information. Traditionally we all know that processed data becomes information- when does it become processed? Based on my know-how, data becomes information when we make a “decision”. Suppose I want to meet a renowned dentist in a new town, I surf the internet and get the relevant contact details so that I can meet that dentist- My decision here is to do a root canal treatment with that dentist and at that time the data on the contact details of the dentist becomes information. Till that time, its just raw data- When I don’t have to do the root canal treatment, I will be least interested in even getting to that data or looking at that data. Does that ring a bell?<br /><br />Let me take another example- Suppose you run “pizza hut” in India. You get unique 200 customers daily and you store all their relevant details viz., first name, last name, wedding anniversary, birthday, what pizza they like the most etc in a database. Now in this list of details; which one is data and which one is information?- In my mind, all of it is just raw data. Suppose, I suddenly decide to run a promotional campaign to give free pizza’s for “x” number of customers whose birthday falls on some date, then that filtered data becomes information for me as I need to email all of them to come to my place. This decision of running a promotional campaign was all of sudden- I could have taken a decision to send free pizza for people who frequent my place all the time. I can’t document all the decisions that I take all the time as business is dynamic and so are decisions. My decisions are dictated by the dynamic nature of the business! That’s where the real catch lies on data and information. Don’t you agree? Based on my decision, the data that I have stored becomes information. If I don’t create large “data systems”, I never will be able to take information out of them.<br /><br />Given this logic, I do believe that google is organizing world’s data so that it becomes information in the right time for people when they make a decision.<br /><br />Business Intelligence all the time is grappling with this dilemma because we cannot document all our decisions based on past history. Based on my business need, my decisions become super dynamic and at that time I cannot be found wanting for data. So in my endeavour to ensure that I have all the relevant data, I capture everything because I don’t know what becomes information and when? I cannot control or tabulate all my present and future decisions but definitely I can invest on storing all types of data because it can become information depending on my need. Given this, real time business intelligence becomes an tricky challenge unless and until we document all our past, present and future decisions.<br /><br />Don’t you all agree? I would love to hear your views about this…<br /><br />Then comes the whole angle of “analytics”….Till thenPrakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-33409262002785531382009-08-16T21:42:00.002+05:302009-08-16T22:50:57.664+05:30"You Know"- Is this communication's greatest filler or failure?Imagine this scenario- A senior leader or a politician or a management expert comes in to speak and the topic goes this way:<br /><br />Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen- I came here to talk about green energy- What is green energy? You know, this is a……You know…..it has….. You know….blah…You know…blah…You know…blah… You know repeated 150 minutes over the next 10 minutes then moving on to infinity of “you know”’s.<br /><br />In December, 2008, Caroline Kennedy used “You Know” 142 times – a lot of internet sites has that video; during that conversation, I am sure that all of us gave our full focus on the fillers and its appearance the next time. It’s more of predicting the occurrence in a speech rather than listening to that speech. Don’t you agree?<br /><br />A lot of times, we inadvertently use the filler, “you know” while we communicate- There is no harm if it is used once or twice during a conversation. But it becomes super frustrating to understand someone’s thoughts if it is used throughout the conversation. Some of my preliminary studies on various leaders, various communicators indicate that they use this filler quite generously. <br /><br />My observations indicate an alarming frequency of this usage- This one is for hardcore statisticians and for folks who like data; On an average, I have observed the usage of fillers some 150-200 times in a 15 minute conversation. “You Know” as the filler is the leader of the pack followed by “like”, “I mean”, “means”, “as in”, “huh” in some geographies. In other geographies, some other filler takes the place!- Somehow YW (shortened for “You Know”) has this egregious ability to penetrate all conversations and spoil the whole show. It’s like a virus that’s constantly spreading unless we consciously ostracize it.<br /><br />I have personally experienced the ability of YW peeping in my conversations- Most of the times we never recognize its destructive ability until someone points it out. In your professional life, people rarely point out; sometimes people point out depending on the hierarchy level that you are in. The higher you go, the number of people who give you candid feedback comes down tremendously and you have to rely on informal sources. Interestingly, my wife pointed this all the time whenever I was giving a talk- I used to get all irritated when she used to point out but I never got angry on YW. I have consciously eradicated the frequency but it does take time when one is habituated to use fillers.<br /><br />Based on my experience, I can suggest couple of measures to eradicate it:<br />• Please acknowledge that we use fillers<br />• Observe your speech- The best way is to listen a recorded speech as that has the best prophylactic effect<br />• If you don’t have the means to record your speech, have a neutral person outside your organization evaluate your speech – During that time, please ask him or her to note down the fillers<br />• Once you have done this, you can validate the annoyance of fillers in our daily speech<br />• If you have reached this stage, you have won 75% of the battle<br />• The remaining 25% is just execution- Consciously avoiding it, replacing it with silences- Sometimes a pregnant silences will do. <br />• Once you have done it, re-record your present conversation and compare it with the earlier one- Then pat one on your back and reward yourself a “Hagen-Dass” ice cream or whatever “you know”! <br /><br /><br />On one of my earlier listening sessions, I was hearing one of the senior leaders speak on one of the management sessions and the frequency of YW in a 10 minute conversation was 250 times. It was really an arduous task for me to segregate the real content after removing the fillers. The person really had great content but YW really made a mess of the content. The only thing that remains is, “you know”, I don’t know what to say!<br /><br />In today’s world, communication has become the greatest tool for everyone irrespective of his/her designation- Communication coaches, advisors and mentors should definitely point this out to senior leaders today. It’s okay to use it but definitely not okay to overuse it- When someone does that, the real content vanishes and all it remains is the filler!<br /><br />Although fillers are a good tool to create on the fly thinking especially when you are on the spot, or when you are thinking aloud or when you want to wing the conversation; this tool needs to be used sparingly!<br /><br />Don’t you all agree? Would love to hear your views or your experience of fillers or your experience on listening to a fun-filled overused “filler” conversation?Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-18831366992673432972009-03-29T12:51:00.002+05:302009-03-29T13:04:35.762+05:30Mandated Sabbatical for LeadersLeaders should take a sabbatical once in 2 years??<br /><br />Can this be institutionalized? This blog post idea came up after reading up articles about Steve Jobs health and his forced vacation from Apple leaving to his successors - Apple’s shares slumped down by 5.7% after hearing about Jobs health news. There was a lot of talk on media, internet about CEO jobs unexpected absence raising uncertainty over leadership, innovation, deal-making, Apple brand building et al. There were talks about Jobs earlier sabbatical and how it influenced Apple and how it will be influencing now; There is also a good amount of bytes spent on Apple sustaining innovation during this period and how it can bounce back etc etc. Tim Cook (COO) is currently acting as the chief-in-command for Apple and recently Scott Forstall (senior VP of iPhone software) gave a good performance in the Macworld- this really signaled the fact that Apple could continue to pull off its marketing campaigns without Jobs at least for some time.<br /><br />I am not attempting to write about Apple or how it can work in Steve Jobs absence- I want to correlate this to a concept in management on whether leaders should mandatorily take a sabbatical once in 2 years or not. The open questions are:<br />1. Is it really healthy for the company?<br />2. Is it really good for the shareholders?<br />3. Is it feasible in the long run?<br />4. Is it sustainable?<br />5. How long should the sabbatical be?<br />6. Is it 1 month, 2 months or 3 months?<br />7. Will the incumbent organization benefit because of this sabbatical? Will the leaders bounce off with new ideas after getting rejuvenated?<br />8. How do we calculate ROI on this sort of thing? What should be the measure?<br /><br />In my view, I think at a high level, top leaders taking a short sabbatical is certainly healthy for the organization in two ways-<br />1. Can strengthen the organization in leadership development & succession planning and get new perspectives- There will be mandated change and there will be a culture of change<br />2. Can allow the leader to think of revolutionary new ideas, new ways of making the organization achieve its objective- This is possible during a sabbatical as technically the leader is still thinking about the organization <br /><br />Diving deep in to point one- Strengthen the organization in to leadership development & succession planning:<br /><br />Leadership development is becoming very important due to change in demographics as the “baby boomers” are getting to retirement age. In addition to this, it has been estimated that 50% of the organizations are facing talent shortages especially in the mid-management and director-level positions. There is an acute need to respond to generational differences and organizations are trying to understand the difference between generations, motivating employees from different generations, leveraging talent of these generations. <br /><br />Typically lot of organizations have a mandate for succession planning and developing leaders in the pipeline- But the statistics say otherwise! Succession Planning plays a crucial role in developing a strong leadership pipeline. This has to work at all levels and not just at the top level or only at the middle level- The culture of succession planning enables a culture of change and its necessary for all organizations to undergo this. When leaders take a sabbatical, they necessarily have to get the successor focus on all the issues, challenges that s/he was doing; This creates a degree of self-assurance for the successor and indirectly builds up the confidence for both parties. Imagine all of these wrapped in a process and a culture whereby all leaders mandatorily should take a sabbatical and come back to reassess where things stand. It is also a reflection of how well they have built teams that can withstand without the leader and also enables the leader to sit back and think of new ideas for the organization. We all know the challenges surrounding it? The challenges are different for a public listed firm, VC backed firm, privately held firm. But, hey we are still talking about the concept- At the top part of the decision tree, if the decision is YES for a sabbatical, then we drill to the next decision tree- Is it a public/private/VC? Then we get to the next level of challenges but at a high level, are we in agreement?<br /><br />For the attention to detail readers, I will dive deeper in to each one of the challenges in my next blog- I do not want to digress from the core topic of mandating a sabbatical for a leader?<br /><br />On Point Two- Gives time for the leader to think of new ideas!<br /><br />This is definitely a loaded statement- Does it mean that leaders don’t think of new ideas while they are working? Are they not supposed to think of it all the time? It is an utopian thought to get everything done at the same time- How can organizations create this framework whereby leaders get some time to think of fresh ideas? We all can guarantee that a “true” leader will be always thinking of continual improvement even when s/he is on vacation or a sabbatical- Its anyways leading for a positive change in the organization. You can take the sabbatical from the leader but you can NEVER take the leadership thinking from a leader. With this optimistic view, don’t we all acknowledge that this creates a framework where in leaders understand the expectations, go back to the drawing board in a leisure manner and think about it in a holistic manner. I am sure that this will happen and everyone will benefit from it tremendously. A lot of people in Silicon Valley are eagerly waiting for the next big blockbuster from Apple as they all feel that Steve Jobs will come up with some cool idea during his health break! Maybe it will happen- We never know!<br /><br />In addition to this, it will also give time for the leader to think of challenging roles/areas in his current portfolio rather than walking away from it. Let me give an example- Most of the time, leaders get bored with their current portfolio and they want change (although this is never openly told but it’s always there!). The sabbatical can help leaders understand the fact that the “grass is never green on the other side”. It gets back the rigor and focus of new ideas!<br /><br />What do you all feel? I know that I have consciously made it provocative in some instances but the idea is to publish my thoughts and get yours as well on this topic!Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-86882554151641795962009-03-21T16:36:00.001+05:302009-03-21T16:38:44.237+05:30Nano Launch: Sentiments!There is a lot of talk around Nano launch- Being in India and being a hard core Indian, we all have multiple questions on the launch:<br /><br />· Is it the right time to launch when the world is in recession?<br />· Is this a car that India needs now?<br />· Is this the car that rural India is looking for?<br />· Is it going to be a huge success?<br />· How will India’s traffic scenario alter due to this?<br />· How will parking be in future for people who own sedan’s/luxury cars?<br />· What will be the modus operandi for tour/travel operator?<br /><br />Some of the voices around this launch are:<br />1. This is great for India’s international image and we should capitalize that<br />2. All patriotic Indians should buy this<br />3. This syncs up well with CK Prahlad’s vision of “Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid”<br />4. All two-wheeler population will acquire a new status owing to Nano- this is great for them!<br />5. This is a good extra car that can be had!<br /><br />While this blog is not going to attempt to answer all the questions or try to say that the voices are right/wrong- this blog is just to reflect the populist sentiments around this launch and get other opinions from my blog readers on what/how they perceive this to launch to be. The reason why I selected “Nano” is simple- This is a great vision by Tata and I would like to understand from the readers what they feel/think about it.<br /><br />From my perspective, I would like to say that this is a great vision translated in to execution- A great example of “Activity Based Costing/Target Based Costing”; I set up the price of my end product and work backwards to ensure that it is feasible. An awesome example of lateral thinking in manufacturing where the bonnet does not consist of the standard materials and the whole design is optimized around my target cost. This is also an example of sheer execution whereby all the roadblocks have been averted to achieve the objective. Don’t you agree?<br /><br />I do have a lot of thoughts regarding Nano on how it can:<br />1. Bridge the status for many people<br />2. Allow people to convert their dreams in reality<br />3. Ensure safe travel<br />4. How a good segment of population will take a cautious approach before buying? They will wait and watch till the official verdict is on<br /><br />Again, I don’t want this blog to sound like a product information log or a feature log but would like capture the sentiments of every Indian who is thinking about Nano.<br /><br />What do you all feel? Please feel free to share your sentiments on comments.Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-30029462609692943282008-04-13T17:53:00.001+05:302008-04-13T17:54:42.321+05:30Understanding Captive Centre DynamicsWe had one interesting issue that came up recently with one of our Fortune 500 account- We won this customer after a lot of homework (their Indian captive centre was not given this work!). This is typical of any large organization where they give certain set of projects to captive centres and certain set to vendors- The alignment between the headquarters and the captive centre itself is a challenge. I assume, that this US arm of our customer had given the project to us without consulting the Indian arm decision makers (as they were not present in the decision making at all)- We were completely oblivious of these things and continued our own way of delivering the project.<br /><br />Our team started working on the implementation plan and they were collaborating constantly with the US arm stakeholders and things were totally fine. The US arm stakeholder wanted our team to work extensively with the Indian captive centre and we were completely fine with that arrangement as well. This project demanded understanding of the customer proprietary environment for us to configure and install the final version- This is quite natural for any vendor to ask for details related to the environment. Our project manager asked for a face-to-face session(termed as “training”) from a stakeholder who is working in the Indian captive centre- Since it involved some expenses, this Indian stakeholder sent an email asking for expense approval from the US stakeholder. The US stakeholder forwarded the same email to the Indian captive centre head of that practice- Now the whole issue started because the practice head looked at the term “training” and escalated to the US head stating that the vendor does not know what he is supposed to do.<br /><br />The practice head went to the extent of cancelling the whole contract because of a wrong usage of the word, “training” by one of our project managers. It is really frustrating and disappointing for us after having done 60% of the project to be in this state because of us not understanding the overall politics and it was a great lesson. The price of this lesson was obscenely expensive but it really taught us certain dynamics that exist between captives and the headquarter companies.<br /><br />In a snapshot, whenever any consulting company is dealing with a customer that has a captive centre, it is super important to understand the priorities of the captive centre. The following steps would be useful:<br />1. Meet the particular captive centre head for that particular practice and if possible explain to them why you were selected in the first place. This can be a ego alleviating thing as well as building networks for future collaboration.<br />2. Set expectation with the US stakeholder on collaboration with the captive centre resources- Also get an introduction with the right people in India!<br />3. Direct your team to be extremely careful and sensitive on dealing with captive centre resources- Its important for them to collaborate but they need to be cautious<br />4. Make sure that you get the common goals/success criteria for the project from the US stakeholder clearly<br />5. Circulate the common goals/success criteria of the project to everyone so that there is no room for anyone to point something that does not align with the common goals<br /><br />In my experience, this is the most bizarre way of cancelling a contract- One can cancel a contract if they feel the common goals/success criteria of the project is not met and ideally that should be basis; This was sidelined and nobody looked at the deliverables or the quality of the deliverables!<br /><br />This was really disappointing for us and our mistake on hindsight was clearly:<br />1. Not meeting the Indian captive centre head for that particular practice<br />2. Not circulating the common goals/success criteria with the captive centre resources<br />3. Wrong usage of certain words (specifically “training”) by our project managersPrakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-19488894537333359822007-09-07T13:46:00.001+05:302008-12-11T05:20:21.563+05:30"Experience" in Indian IT industry<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLi15w2iyYfWp6xUZzO88M9297dZDPza9O-J_XSjsHy1jpPHUFfhgiXLr5FhHxUuRdIGwYHgZtN4w33UH71yboPInAisb5ewss3R3ECUXiMUnlKy8GHZt3fAnOTt1rHZrb9Xq/s1600-h/JobHopper.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118187869949706674" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLi15w2iyYfWp6xUZzO88M9297dZDPza9O-J_XSjsHy1jpPHUFfhgiXLr5FhHxUuRdIGwYHgZtN4w33UH71yboPInAisb5ewss3R3ECUXiMUnlKy8GHZt3fAnOTt1rHZrb9Xq/s320/JobHopper.gif" border="0" /></a> Someone said that "experience is a comb that nature gives to us when we become bald". This quote automatically becomes true for a FEW of the middle managers/senior managers in Indian IT industry.<br /><br /><br />Every manager/leader in the Indian IT industry need to spend time on talent acquisition as that is the primary driver for this people driven industry- That is the core for delivering software projects. Given this backdrop, I spend almost 30% of my time on talent acquisition meeting a wide variety of "experienced" knowledge workers/managers!<br /><br />In a week, I spend time on meeting atleast 4-5 senior people who are either shortlisted or come for the first round. Usually I learn a lot during those interviews and I am always very OPEN for a discussion as I strongly believe that interviews are an equal footing forums! I have had my best debates with some of the best people whereby we both get enlightened on some of the traditional stuff and ofcourse I love that! There have been very RARE occasions whereby flukes come in and it becomes hilarious to write a blog on them! This is one such occasion whereby I was really tempted to pen down my conversation!<br /><br />So I happened to meet one of the so called highly "experienced" general manager- He had 18 years of experience in the IT industry. His resume was flawless except for his track record as in his 18 years he has JUST jumped over 13 companies! When I reviewed his resume, his track record completely struck me - I mean how can a person in a senior position do this? Nevertheless I was very OPEN and asked him to explain on this?<br /><br />Let me change this in a dialogue fashion:<br /><br />I : Your track record seems to show disturbing trend and in senior roles you have never stayed beyond a year? Why is that? Could you please explain?<br />18 years general manager- Prospective Candidate (PE): Oh that’s not a big deal! I was always head hunted from day one! Since it’s a capitalistic market, I always got an opportunity to move on and see different companies which actually helped me to learn a lot!<br /><br />I: What can you really learn if you have moved on every 9-12 months?<br />PE: Well! That’s always the challenge. I was fortunate enough to do something within a short timeframe and complete my tasks and take new tasks in new companies.<br /><br />By this time I realized that there is no point in getting in depth with this point. I decided to move on!<br /><br />I: You have mentioned in your resume in one of your roles that living in India was one of your achievements? Does that sound illogical?<br />PE: Its great that you caught it because I thought about this when I wrote the resume. Its basically a role whereby I was expected to do sales and marketing for US but I practically ended up doing the same job in India.<br /><br />I: How is that considered as an achievement?<br />PE: Hmmm… deep pause…basically I was good at sales in India itself which my bosses did not know and then they retained me here rather than relocating me to US.<br /><br />They seemed to be wise- I kept this thought to myself. Okay- again no point in digging this deep! Lets move on was my approach!<br /><br />Suddenly the PE was proactive- He started off this time!!<br /><br />PE: Since I have 18 years of experience I know the IT industry landscape and the metrics and everything. So I can really contribute at the executive management level leave alone senior management!<br /><br />To myself, I started thinking- How can people dig their own hole?<br /><br />I: Well that’s interesting- What is the average net margin in the Indian IT industry?<br />PE: That’s 40% (his tone was super confident)<br /><br />I: Aha- so whats gross margin?<br />PE: Well both are same. Its 40%- I know this very well.<br /><br />I: Hmmm. Okay! Hypothetically speaking if your topline is 100 crore and your bottomline is 50 crores- What is your margin? Is that NET or GROSS?<br />PE: That’s really complicated! Can you repeat this question?<br /><br />I am like- Dude- You do not know what you are talking about? Get your basics right and then we will talk but you don’t know anything?<br /><br />Immediately the PE said that he missed out CMMi implementation which was another one of his achievement.<br /><br />I: Okay (with depression). Which level were you implementing? Level 5?<br />PE: It is Level 3. Only when you implement Level 3 you can go to Level 5.<br /><br />I: Okay. How many KPAs are there in Level 3 since you were leading the effort?<br />PE: There are so many KPA’s in general. We have to take the relevant ones and just implement it. This is a very easy process.<br /><br />This was the point that brought the end of the discussion! Period!<br /><br />I was polite to him and said that we will get back shortly! Frankly I felt really sad because of the state of affairs! I had nothing to comment on as some Project Managers come in with the same degree of knowledge sometimes except for the fact that they don’t know how to do an MPP!Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-32189112017187718292007-05-25T19:15:00.000+05:302007-05-25T19:22:37.908+05:30Alexander's Three WishesI received this in a simple email forward from one of my friends Vijay based out of Pune. It was so thought provoking that I felt like publishing in the blog.<br /><br />Here is very instructive incident involving the life of Alexander, the great Greek king.<br /><br />Alexander, after conquering many kingdoms, was returning home.On the way, he fell ill and it took him to his death bed. With death staring him in his face, Alexander realized how his conquests, his great army, his sharp sword and all his wealth were of no consequence.<br /><br />He now longed to reach home to see his mother's face and bid her his last adieu. But, he had to accept the fact that his sinking health would not permit Him to reach his distant homeland.<br /><br />So, the mighty conqueror lay prostrate and pale, helplessly waiting to breathe his last.<br /><br />He called his generals and said, 'I will depart from this world soon, I have three wishes, please carry them out without fail.'<br /><br />With tears flowing down Their cheeks, the generals agreed to abide by their king's last wishes.<br /><br />'My first desire is that,' said Alexander, 'My physicians alone must carry my coffin.'<br /><br />After a pause, he continued, 'Secondly, I desire that when my coffin is being carried to the grave, the path leading to the graveyard be strewn with gold, silver and precious stones which I have collected in my treasury.'<br /><br />The king felt exhausted after saying this. He took a minute's rest and continued.<br /><br />'My third and last wish is that both my hands be kept dangling out of my coffin.'<br /><br />The people who had gathered there wondered at the king's strange wishes. But no one dare bring the question to their lips.<br /><br />Alexander's favorite general kissed his hand and pressed them to his heart. 'O king, we assure you that your wishes will all be fulfilled. But tell us 'why do you make such strange wishes?'<br /><br />At this Alexander took a deep breath and said: 'I would like the world to know of the three lessons I have just learnt.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I want my physicians to carry my coffin because people should realize that no doctor can really cure any body.</span> They are powerless and cannot save a person from the clutches of death. So let not people take life for granted.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The second wish of strewing gold, silver and other riches on the way to the graveyard</span> is to tell People that not even a fraction of gold will come with me.<br /><br />I spent all my life earning riches but cannot take anything with me. Let people realize that it is a sheer waste of time to chase wealth.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">And about my third wish of having my hands dangling out of the coffin, </span><br /><br />I wish people to know that I came empty handed into this world and<br />empty handed I go out of this world.'<br /><br />With these words, the king closed his eyes. Soon he let death conquer him and breathed his last.<br /><br />Have a Blessed Day !!Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-66763259325064621422007-04-22T14:08:00.001+05:302008-12-11T05:20:21.800+05:30The Blame Game- Top Management is always the enemy!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhscl73IJ1n2mNAsIFNPIvWDqkh3XalALIqDXZIlmUuDDADQTCHQP55SaFazH_-IaNmOaJZpc6oEzXTasdk4wQyCR73IHHjEQgC_GZYsdhZUxXW-u-oEeiNWrp0kkH8quJYlE3G/s1600-h/Boss5.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5056487884169252818" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhscl73IJ1n2mNAsIFNPIvWDqkh3XalALIqDXZIlmUuDDADQTCHQP55SaFazH_-IaNmOaJZpc6oEzXTasdk4wQyCR73IHHjEQgC_GZYsdhZUxXW-u-oEeiNWrp0kkH8quJYlE3G/s320/Boss5.gif" border="0" /></a><br />Everytime as middle managers we wear multiple hats viz., handling customers, handling subordinates, streamlining processes, handling bosses and handling super bosses!! The whole idea of this blog stems from the fact that at some point of time managers would be frustrated at the whole idea of executive management(corporate) giving them some directions that are totally tangential to what they do on a daily basis. Managers also feel that executive management has got no clue on the practical implementation angle and they just make all decisions top-down. They feel that corporate does not understand the daily challenges that they face and corporate feels that managers need to be guided all the time. There is definitely some wisdom here looking at both angles and this is the first step when a manager transforms himself to become a leader!<br /><br />Corporate is not the enemy even though it can too often seem that way with unreasonable demands or out-of-touch expectations. It's just that corporate has a job to do, and sometimes it actually knows some things that managers don't know. Corporate is not trying to micromanage but trying to balance middle management needs with the needs of other parts of the organization! Naturally it's trying to manage short-term results and long-term investments. It's trying to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, a worthy cause underneath it all. This perspective usually gets lost with the middle management in both ways- Either the middle management thinks that the corporate is the enemy or they think they just need to listen to what corporate states and do exactly what they are told to do. Obviously both these states are detrimental to the growth of the organization and the growth of the management team!<br /><br />I have seen a lot of middle managers complain that the corporate has got no perspective on the day to day realities and I do empathize with them for sure. For example: We are currently being audited for KPMG on CMMi and ofcourse the corporate goal is to have all project managers follow processes for all customers. But project managers face the challenge of implementing this with a customer who does not give a damn about processes!! This is a case in point whereby the project managers will be pulled by the corporate for non-implementation. There are many ways to solve this problem but blaming the corporate for pulling on this is not going to solve the problem!.<br /><br />But even if the corporate's intentions are good- beware! You as a leader must relentlessly shield your team from its interference. To do otherwise is a fast track to losing your team's confidence and respect. Every time you groan that "Executive Officer A says that we need to have 100% billing for this customer" or complain that "Executive Officer B is forcing me to get rid of person Z because he's so bad at his customer presentation/packaging skills and attitude", you make yourself look like a puppet whose strings are being pulled by the corporate. In fact, you actually make yourself a puppet. It is very easy for managers to look at their team and scream about the corporate; And this is exactly what they should NOT do. Ever, ever, ever. That's a total career suicide for the manager and not much better for the team. Very soon, instead of looking to you for direction, your people will be looking around you, searching for signs from the "real boss".<br /><br />It really happened with me once whereby I was reviewing the resource utilization with my business manager and as usual I asked him to reallocate 4 resources to another new project as the current project was coming to close. Immediately the business manager agreed for the same as he felt that he was just obeying corporate's instructions!! Unfortunately the current project that is coming to close can be extended through a maintenance contract with the same team and there is a potential repeat business because of the same team. Ideally this perspective should have been given by the business manager; instead of that the reallocation just happened because the corporate asked for it. Tomorrow if there is a question on the repeat business it will be easy to wash the hands and say, "hey they asked for it and they got it".<br /><br />As a manager you should never even give a perception to your team members that you cannot fight for them! Once you give that perception it is very easy for the team to observe and understand the dynamics. As I always say, "everyone observes you while you are at work" and there is no hiding from the fact that your team always evaluates you every second. So any complaining like this will immediately change their perception of you as a leader!<br /><br />The perspective on this very simple- Sometimes there are optimal/rational decisions imposed to the management team and sometimes there are sub-optimal/irrational decisions imposed to the management team! The key is to find the balance in these decisions and create your own communication plan that can address and align both the interests!<br /><br />It is very common to have corporate interfere with your team thereby giving a perception to middle management that they are micro-managing, hurting speed and morale etc. Obviously the suggestion is to not become a corporate apologist, trying to sell every edict to your people as if it were ice cream. By all means, push back hard on behalf of your business. Challenge nonsense expectations. Negotiate for resources. But keep that process behind closed doors, and when it is over, whether you have made gains or not, own corporate's final decision as your own. Take it to your people as your plan.<br /><br />Remember Executive Officer A's idea of having 100% billing with a particular customer? Say he won't budge, even after you've made the case that it's stupid in your business high-demand environment. At that point, you need to buck up and move on. Get with your team and figure out a way to deliver the plan of having 100% billable resources by creating a bench that can take care of transitions/replacements!<br /><br />As for poor resource Z, whom executive officer B wants fired- that's another case for the middle managers to own. If resouce Z is a solid contributor, instead of pulling the trigger while blaming executive officer B, quietly work your tail off to improve his packaging skills and attitude. In other words, make it your job to manage the interface between corporate and your team. And when corporate makes that interface thorny, don't share your pain- absorb it. If that sounds a bit unnatural, that's because it is. It is perfectly human for managers to want to blame "up there" for how hard it is "down here". But real leaders can't do that. And they don't.<br /><br />Prakash Gurumoorthy<br /><br />PS: I have taken some ideas from an interview of Jack Welch to write this blog as I felt this is appropriate for any middle managers!<br /><br /><img alt="" src="file:///C:/DOCUME~1/prakash/LOCALS~1/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg" />Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-1154699103016858812006-08-04T18:49:00.001+05:302008-04-13T17:57:21.782+05:30Software Project ManagementSoftware Project Management is a very well researched area and given the backdrop of globalization and IT revolution that has happened with India there has been a lot of studies as well as practice that has been made in this space. So I am not going to write about the same old story here.<br /><br />Well for the beginners- Software Project Management is all about managing the customers, managing the technical developers/leads, and managing the necessary software development lifecycle (SDLC) processes to ensure that a particular project is immensely successful! At the end of the day, there are 3 objectives that a project manager should satisfy:<br /><ol><li>Customers should be extremely thrilled with the execution of the project</li><li>Developers/Tech Leads should have had a good challenging time in executing the project</li><li>Process expectations for a project viz. Reliability, Risk Mitigation, Setting expectations, Scability and so on and so forth</li></ol>This seems very simple when anyone reads about it and almost 60-70% of software projects worldover fail to meet expectations interms of effort, schedule and cost.<br /><br />Why is that so? When things are so clear and when we all know that these are the areas that can make a project fail- Why is it so difficult to ensure 100% reliability?<br /><br />Here is where Project Managers play a significant role in my mind and there are 2 aspects to this role.<br /><br />There is a SCIENTIFIC aspect to project management and there is a ARTISTIC aspect to project management. The scientific part is reasonably simple:<br /><ol><li>One needs to have clear specifications</li><li>One needs to create a good project plan that can be tracked</li><li>One needs to get the right technical people</li><li>One needs to ensure that all the relevant processes are followed</li></ol>There are still a few more to this scientific part that I have omitted as part of this blog is not to teach project management but to draw out perspectives on why projects fail and what can project managers do about it!!<br /><br />The ARTISTIC aspect of project management is something that we all need to address as well:<br />What do you mean by artistic aspect: Things like:<br /><ol><li>Do we know the one single most thing that can make this project fail? Are we able to sniff that beforehand?</li><li>Do we have adequate relationship with the customer as well as the developers so that you can address conflict effectively? Believe me- this is the toughest part!</li></ol>These involve a lot of intuition and instinct- This is what differentiates a successful project manager and an unsuccessful one!<br /><br />Given the backdrop that we need to balance both scientific and artistic aspects of project management- How we do hone these skills and ensure that everyone possesses it?<br /><br />Unfortunately there are no DO and DONT's for enhancing the artistic aspects of project management- Its like common sense! Either you have it or you dont have it!<br /><br />But one thing can be honed- Project Managers can first identify that this is an issue and if they are able to consciously address it; they will be able to transcend the scientific boundaries that they have created and think more holistically.<br /><br />This area is really tricky and it is the same as THINKING- I will write about this in my next blog.<br /><br />I have seen numerous projects as a project manager, account manager, engagement manager, transition manager, program manager at <a href="http://www.photoninfotech.com/">Photon </a>and I sincerely believe that project management as a discipline needs to be improved still!<br /><br />Till then,<br />Prakash<br /><br /><a href="http://www.photoninfotech.com/">www.photoninfotech.com</a>Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-1154596623181909552006-08-03T14:46:00.000+05:302006-08-17T16:48:26.766+05:30Education System"Live the life you have imagined. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams"- Henry David Thoreau<br /><br /><br />The most important thing that is lacking in indian education is pragmatic thinking!! We always take pride in the fact that our education has discipline. Nevertheless the concept of thinking synchronously aligning their skills becomes paramount when a student goes for a graduation after school.I am not good at statistics and hence am avoiding numbers or percentages;but I can say most of the indian middle class families orient their children in such a mindset that social acceptance,earnings,position,status are important in a populace of 1 billion and that should be the sole goal and objective-so get in to a education which makes you achieve that irrespective of your native skills. All one needs to make sure is to be in an area that mints money.Typical example is software industry where people just flocked like a bee to honey for overseas opportunities and definitely the concept of devalued rupee coming in to play(thanks to all our economy);it looks like a heaven.We can't ask more!! On hindsight this developed a sort of matrimonial profiling where a girl need not have fellowship;her father just needs to catch the right software fella.I am digressing here a little bit and i perfectly understand the implications of all these things and i dont blame anything. Coming back to education,this is perfect case of mismatch where one never knows what he is good at but aligns himself in such a way that he adapts to the new surrounding to make sure he delivers the best;which alternatively makes him defensive.The reason is he is always doing something which he has been given but not something which he gives in with passion! The point here is the vaccum which the education system is creating and how it impacts a student in the future when he/she painfully discovers that they are not suited for that particular job! Reality strikes for many of them and then they start the process of evaluating themselves and get in to an area of their choice if they are lucky.Usually by that time many personally become so responsible that they cant become adventurous with their career.Lot of constraints engulf them and they become totally lost in that eternal loop of balancing their personal and professional constraints.I strongly and sincerely believe that our education system makes us much more smarter and adaptable but the downside of the same is the blinkers it puts on every student and makes them lose the overall perspective.Have we ever thought what we like doing rather than what we should do? This is where the difference springs up and we become a creature tuned for society and parental constraints.We vegetate in that mundane world continually evaluating ourselves whether we are doing the thing we love passionately or not.Thanks to our education system which imparts us so much of knowledge but sadly no wisdom!! This concept can be well proven when you observe the Western Education System where the emphasis is more on independent thinking and less of discipline.I am not here eulogising the western eduaction but the point is to take the best part of any system and integrate in so that the evens are higher than the odds.In the west the focus is given on thinking and then developing themselves as a personality.In essence they think a lot about what they want to do and they just dont do something for the sake of doing it. This is because of education and the upbringing;I dunno the exact split up of these two but i prefer to leave the upbringing part as its more relative.I have consciously left the aspect of economic conditions of a developed country vis-a-vis a developing country for reasons completely unknown to me also as iam not good at economics too. I think the solution to this problem would be to emphasize independent thinking and de-linking money as the sole motivator for doing anything.Its pretty idealistic but the perspective is to make sure our education system addresses thinking as a course and appreciates that.Teachers dont give that embarassing look at students who ask,"why" in the class;Conscious promotion of independent thinking will holistically promote personalities rather than individuals.We have too much of individuals already.Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31947587.post-1154596515752782842006-08-03T14:43:00.000+05:302006-08-03T14:45:15.766+05:30Excellence- Is it a good trait or is it dying?Its very difficult to train someone to understand Excellence- This is a phenomenal trait that is absolutely boundaryless.For the freshers- What is Excellence? Thanks to our Sequential Thinking we all correlate Excellence to being proficient in academics or getting the highest rank or getting the highest post etc etc. But Excellence can be achieved in every activity of life if we decide to do it!Think about it- I have been observing one of my housekeeping boys(or shall i say adult) whose sole job is to ensure that he cleans the office, run errands for all the staff and just do what he is told to do. A job cannot get more simple than that or it cannot get more mundane than that- But where this gentleman gets his RESPECT is showing SERIOUSNESS to his job irrespective of the nature of the job. The first step to Excellence is to ensure that whatever we do(the stress is on whatever) we do it perfectly- We need to be satisfied about it. When I mean we need to be satisfied about it, I mean we need EVALUATE ourselves first in the most ruthless way!! How many of us do it? Why do we ALLOW others to evaluate us? Is it our habit to allow others to pass comments on our work? No!! Then, Why?? Think about it again?If we evaluate ourselves, we should stand first in OUR EYES first!! Once we cultivate our mindset towards this approach we then can do things perfectly as per our own standards!The second step then is to evaluate our own standards continually and then take corrective action- This is a major step for many people who think they are excellent but get in to the "frog in the well" syndrome. They then become strict disciplinarian because they believe that they are good in their own standards and they NEVER evaluate their own standards! The reason is also two-fold: Since they are in the midst of a lot of people who dont have any standards of their own they feel that they are higher up as they have crossed level 1 and secondly they also get cob-webs in their thinking because of plain arrogance!!I always felt that we are great in doing things when we are told to do and we are NEVER attempting to EXCEL at doing something that we have been doing for a while. Its a MINDSET- I see a lot of us being/becoming more ambitious in our career and its GREAT to see that change. To add on to that change is being EXCELLENT on whatever we do!!<br /><br />Think about it folks!!<br /><br />Till then,Prakash Gurumoorthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06048489597734317542noreply@blogger.com2