A Case of Exploding Mangoes

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.

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, wit and the portrayal of characters.

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.

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!

Hanif has a gift with words, wit and satire- Let me take some pearls here from the book:

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!!

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?

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.” :-)) :-))

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? “

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”

Democracy Vs Progress

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.

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”.

I have been to all these meetings and the key take-away is as follows:
• Everyone wants to make a point
• Everyone has an opinion about everything that they know partially, fully or none!
• Everyone wants to point a problem [seldom do people point a solution]
• 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]
• Everyone wants ROI
• 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!

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.

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!

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!

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! :-))

Barack Obama’s Presentation Skills- India Trip, Nov 2010

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.

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 [tp://news.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/nov/07/slide-show-1-obama-visit-ask-obama-tough-questions-keep-him-on-his-toes.htm ] 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.

Here are my observations:

• 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!!

• 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.

• 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!

• Assertiveness in communication- I think this is an amazing trait of Big O. The tone tells about the assertiveness on some issues!

• 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. :-)

You can view the Youtube version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLapI4dQBAE



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.

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.
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!

Shantaram- Book Review

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!!

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!!

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.

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!

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?? :-))

Innovation-Ideating a Product

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!!

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.

The product claims are as follows:
• Replaceable filter based
• Filter is based on low cost natural ingredients- Rice husk ash encapsulated with nano-silver particles
• Requires no energy or running water to operate
• Purify up to 3000 litres of water after which bulb needs to be replaced

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!

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!!

They have come up with 21 great questions for developing new products under these categories:

• “De-average” buyers and users-
1. Which customers use or purchase our product in the most unusual way?
2. Do any customers need vastly more or less sales and service attention than most?
3. For which customers are the support costs (order entry, tracking, customer- specific design) either unusually high or unusually low?
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?
5. Who spends at least 50% of our product costs to adapt it to their specific needs?

• Examine binding constraints-
6. What is the biggest hassle of purchasing or using our product?
7. What are some examples of ad hoc modifications that customers have made to our product?
8. For which current customers is our product least suited?
9. For which particular usage occasions is our product least suited?
10. Which customers does the industry prefer not to serve and why?
11. Which customers could be major users, if only we could remove one specific barrier we’ve never previously considered?

• Explore unexpected successes-
12. Who uses our product in ways we never expected or intended?
13. Who uses our product in surprisingly large quantities?

• Imagine Perfection-
14. How would we do things differently if we had perfect information about our buyers, usage, distribution channels, and so on?
15. How would our product change if it were tailored for every customer?

• Look beyond the boundaries of our business-
16. Who else is dealing with the same generic problem as we are but for an entirely different reason? How have they addressed it?
17. What major breakthroughs in efficiency or effectiveness have we made in our business that could be applied in another industry?
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?

• Revisit the premises underlying our processes and products-
19. Which technologies embedded in our product have changed the most since the product was last redesigned?
20. Which technologies underlying our production processes have changed the most since we last rebuilt our manufacturing and distribution systems?
21. Which customers’ needs are shifting most rapidly? What will they be in 5 years?

Data Vs Information

Business 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”.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

Don’t you all agree? I would love to hear your views about this…

Then comes the whole angle of “analytics”….Till then

"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:

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Based on my experience, I can suggest couple of measures to eradicate it:
• Please acknowledge that we use fillers
• Observe your speech- The best way is to listen a recorded speech as that has the best prophylactic effect
• 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
• Once you have done this, you can validate the annoyance of fillers in our daily speech
• If you have reached this stage, you have won 75% of the battle
• The remaining 25% is just execution- Consciously avoiding it, replacing it with silences- Sometimes a pregnant silences will do. 
• 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”! 


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!

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!

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!

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?