Reflections of a bystander

Resign today for that long awaited raise!

2011-05-15T21:01:00.001+05:30

So here is a common script that I've seen played over and over again.
An organization 'values' a potential hire based on the 'standardised' parameters of (a) number of years of experience (b) current compensation (c) current position (d) existing pay scale in the organization etc. The candidate is made an offer (position and salary) in the 'best interests' of the organization which turns out to 'under-value' the 'potential' of the candidate. The person joins the organization and turns out to be an extra-ordinary performer and adds value to the organization way beyond his brief. When the first performance cycle comes, unfortunately the company is not able to promote him because the minimum period an employee has to spend in the company before a promotion is 12 months. He is rated at the highest performance level and gets the 'best' raise possible in percentage terms. But because he was under-valued at the time of hire, a high percentage raise does not correspond to a high raise in absolute salary and he continues to be under-valued. At the same appraisal cycle, he sees his lesser performing colleagues who had spent more time in the organization getting promoted by virtue of being ahead of him in the 'waiting line' for promotion. Our protagonist feels dejected and de-motivated, but having the DNA of a high performer, he is again motivated by the challenges at work and continues adding value to the organization. The great appraisal fair comes calling again and our under-valued poster boy gets that long awaited promotion with a considerable raise in percentage terms. But, the fact that he was initially under-valued continues to offset the promotion and raise that has been doled out. Interestingly, the organization remains ignorant to the fact that a high performing employee has been under-valued and does nothing to correct this imbalance.
One fine day, revelation finally dawns on our hero that he is grossly under-valued by the organization and decides to quit his current job. When our hero breaks the news, it's received with extreme surprise and disappointment by the organization. Management goes over-board to pacify our protagonist and let him know how much he is valued by the organization. They also ask him what they can do to change his decision and some people even promise that anything can be done to keep him in the company (which will be carefully worded like, 'We can 'work' it out!). After couple of rounds of negotiation, both parties reach an agreement and our hero continues to be with the company. The employee is either promised an astronomical hike, or a long term foreign assignment or a certain role he had his eyes on.
What surprises me most is this reactive response from organizations - they seem to wake up only when they realise that an exceptional employee is resigning! HR and management talks about salary ranges, salary parity within the team, restrictions on promotion etc. to justify their weird decisions during an appraisal cycle, but when crisis hits (like when a high performer resigns) all these 'standards' seem irrelevant and insignificant. If this is not opportunism and hypocrisy, what is?!!

Here are my take-aways from this post:

(a) A high potential employee who is under-valued at the time of hire, will continue to be under-valued in the organization, unless the employee deliberately tries to change this condition.
(b) Standards defined for employee appraisals including salary ranges, parity within team etc. are not golden standards and can be altered as and when required by the management.
(c) There is no mechanism or process to measure the value of an employee, other than archaic employee appraisal mechanism that rates an employee based on colours, numbers or alphabets!
(d) As they say, 'A great employee is 'x' times more valuable than a good employee' (I've put a value of 'x' as I've seen different values quoted for this parameter by different researchers). If that is true, what are you as an organization doing to recognize the 'value' of these great performers and retain them in the company?

The Mars-Venus story??

2011-05-13T23:59:00.000+05:30

I remember a conversation from a meeting with my HR spoke couple of years back. She asked what my interests were and I said that I blog a bit on PeopleSoft. Her reaction was, 'You write about work even after work? That sounds boring'.
May be this explains why there is a distinct disconnect between the employee population and the HR fraternity in IT/Software organizations.
When do I get to meet an HR person who understands and appreciates my intrinsic interests and motivations?

Reflections on the Commonwealth Games mess

2010-09-25T14:33:00.004+05:30

'All that's necessary for forces of evil to win in this world is for enough good men to do nothing'

-Edmund Burke.

Random Thought

2009-10-26T11:21:00.002+05:30

"The human mind is not adapted to interpreting how social systems behave"
-Jay Forrester

Why HR departments are not effective in most organisations?

2009-10-25T12:37:00.003+05:30

Is the 'HR' department an administrative or strategic arm of an organisation? While numerous books, HR practitioners and business leaders will vouch that HR departments have a strategic significance in an organisation's DNA, the evidence on the ground says otherwise.
Just for the sake of empirical data, let me try to list down the interactions I have had with the 'people's department' across the various companies I've worked with:

1. During campus recruitment and subsequent interviews (including scheduling interviews).
2. While joining a new organisation and the induction program.
3. During the Exit Process.
4. While clarifying HR policy issues like Leave Encashment, Higher Education policy etc.
5. During team outings and team building exercises.
6. During 'informal activities' conducted in the workplace to add the 'fun' element at work.
7. Carrying out yearly routines like Performance Appraisals, Skill Assessment etc.
8. Filling out 'employee satisfaction surveys' (I am not sure whether the results of these surveys form the basis of evaluating the performance of the HR departments, I hope not!)

I am sure that a lot of you would have a similar list of 'encounters with the HR team'. None of the items I've enumerated point to the fact that HR plays a strategic role in the workplace. Why does HR departments fail to come out of their cocoon of carrying out routine and monotonous administrative activities and why do they monumentally fail to connect with the employees?
I found this article in the Strategy and Business magazine titled 'The Talent Lie' to be a penetrating analysis of the issue. An excerpt from the article which nails down the real reason for the failure of HR is given below:

"The best people coming out of business schools typically do not choose careers in HR. The field pays lower salaries and is not seen as a great starting point for the career of any would-be senior executive (except, of course, for HR executives). As a result, human resources is not a preferred concentration in most MBA programs. Almost none of today’s top executives have ever worked in an HR department. (A couple of exceptions are Anne Mulcahy at Xerox and John Hofmeister at Shell Oil.)

In most organizations, the HR function itself is staffed with competent professionals, but few have had middle or senior management jobs outside HR. As a result, they don’t have the experience that helps them think of their work in the context of the larger business and its priorities. This in turn means that they often have difficulty providing the kind of strategic direction and advice that is needed. PepsiCo, General Electric, and IBM are often cited as leaders in the deployment of HR, but even these companies do not systematically rotate their top management talent into the HR department. (They do, however, recruit top talent into the HR department.)"

'People management' is not an activity that can be centralised and left to a team that has not worked amongst the people slogging on the shop floor - they will always remain disconnected from the realities of the workplace, the true aspirations of the workers, their needs and more importantly the solutions that can be put in place.

Measuring the RoI on Entry Level Training Programs

2009-10-13T10:55:00.004+05:30

Organisations spend a fortune on training fresh recruits from campus (as well as on other organisational learning initiatives which is such a fad in this 'knowledge economy'), but I wonder whether they ever measure the return on investment that they get from these trainings?
Even though I do not have empirical data to prove my case, I would safely bet that most organisations do not measure their returns on trainings and more importantly do not even have a methodology to do so. I perceive this as a serious faultine in an organisation's HR and learning processes, because the organisation is fundamentally not measuring whether the huge amount of money, time and resources spent on training are contributing to organisational effectiveness and growth. What is the point of training if the employee is not able to contribute to the bottom line of an organisation? I am convinced that there are serious faults with the way training is being imparted currently, especially to entry level employees (I had touched upon this point in a previous post), because there is a glaring disconnect between actual project contribution of an employee and the training that is imparted.
Why does this happen?
The primary reason for this has to be the organisational design - with different departments handling a 'resource' at different points of time and working in silos. Almost every company that I know has a dedicated training department which takes care of the entire training initiatives, then there is the HR department which liasons between the employees and the training department and finally there are the operational departments where the employees actually work. Now what happens when an entry level employee joins the organisation? The HR folks handle all the onboarding formalities and pass the new employees on to the training department. The training department 'owns' the freshers for the stipulated training time which could range from one month to a maximum of three months. In the mean time, the HR department will liason with the various operations departments to understand the openings available for freshers in various projects and will decide on a resourcing plan. Once the training period is over, the fresh recruits will be 'released' to their allocated operations departments. That's the end of the story - the training department will flaunt their 'metrics' on the number of recruits they trained each period, the number of recruits who obtained excellent rating in the evaluation exams, number of hours training was conducted and a host of other 'performance indicators' that will help the training manager draw up colourful charts, the HR department on the other hand will also draw up their metrics on the number of positions filled with freshers, number of offers vs. number of actual joiners etc. Are these metrics and measures important and of any value? Is the measure of the number of people trained or number of hours training was imparted of any true value to the organisation? My answer is no - these are all dead statistics, numbers which might look good on a presentation, but giving no real insight into the actual impact on organisational performance. If the actual effectiveness of trainings are to be meausured, the training and HR teams should move beyond their current boundaries and look into the operations departments for data on the impact of the trained employees on project delivery. Post-training, if majority of the employees have not been able to contribute positively to a project or if their skills are being eroded, then that does not speak volumes about the effectiveness of the training. I am also convinced that if organisations start measuring the actual impact of training and more importantly learning on organisational performance, they will even rethink some of the training strategies they have in place. Thus my argument is that organisations need to meausre the returns they have on trainings and need a complete rethink about the KPIs that are set for the training department, the measure of a good training department is not in the number of people they were able to train, but in the contribution of the training to organisation's financial performance. But that cannot happen as long as the various departments work in isolation of each other and lack systems thinking. Well there is only one important measure of success for any department in an organisation, the direct or indirect impact that the department's activities have on the financial performance of an organisation.

Just Believe!

2009-10-13T03:52:00.005+05:30

The greatest mistake a manager can make is to not see the potential and aspiration of his team members and provide the right opportunities. Why is it that most people I know reluctant to give inexperienced yet high potential employees the big opportunity citing their relative lack of exposure to an area as a constraint? Experience is a devious word and over the years as I have come to understand, one that can breed mediocrity. Trust and believe in the 'potential' of an employee rather than his/her specific experience, for only the that can assure you continuous growth and excellence.
Just believe....the results will follow and there is no better investment you can make towards the future of the team and the organisation!

Watch without numbers....

2009-10-02T15:54:00.008+05:30

Overheard at office, a conversation between two cubicle mates, working on different projects:

A: 'When did you come to office today?'
B: 'Hmm, around 8 in the morning?'
A: 'My goodness, that's almost 12 hours of work, too much of work load these days is it?'
B: 'I enjoy what I do, I am getting to work on end to end systems here and not just at a small piece of code. I don't think that's any load'

It goes back to the old quote 'If you find a work you enjoy doing, you will not be working for a single day of your life'. Well, I find that the workplace is a victim of an overdose of this propaganda cocktail of 'a balanced life', 'work-life balance', 'fun at work' and the rest that tend to treat work as a means of earning livelihood and separated from the definition of the self.

Well, does it really matter from the point of view of an organisation what attitude an individual has towards work, as long as deadlines are met and great products are delivered? Well I think yes, it does indeed matter....that might just be one piece to the jigsaw called 'true work satisfaction'
I want to sign off this post with a short scene from Good Will Hunting where Matt Demon tries to explain why he's able to do Organic Chemistry problems with ease (when Minnie Driver says that 'nobody does Organic Chemistry for fun'. How many times have I heard one variant or other of that phrase - 'nobody works for fun!').

2009-10-02T15:27:00.002+05:30

I've been shopping at Flipkart

2009-08-10T01:28:00.004+05:30

The entrepreneur bug seems to have bitten too many young Indians of late! We've been seeing entrepreneurship camps, been hearing about seeding (that was a pure biological term in the 90s) and angels (and this was reserved to the Bible) and have been having our own share of college dropouts idolising Bill Gates! For someone who truly believes in the power of potential and will, it's just amazing to see this enormous rush of energy and I am convinced that some of these ventures will take India from being a pure service oriented market to a product oriented one.
It is in this context that I want to write about Flipkart.com. It is an online book store, modeled in the same lines as of Amazon started by two IIT Delhi grads. There isn't anything spectacular about Flipkart, because they are just following the lines of a model started off by Jeff Bezos 15 years ago. But somehow I like Flipkart (as they say it all lies in winning the heart of the customer!) for it's simplicity, for the fact that it's founded by two young Indian lads, for it's excellent share of rare books, for it's excellent price mechanism where the same title is offered at varying prices based on the print, publisher etc, for it's extremely search engine friendly design, for it's easy and flexible payment options, for it's very prompt delivery and excellent packing (the books I ordered came bubbled wrapped and in a cardboard box) and for it's decent customer service (when they could not procure a book I ordered from any of their vendors, they gave me a discount coupon on future purchages and I just got an alert from them saying that a book that I said I was interested in was available with them now). The site has a user friendly design with common features like comments and related books, but considering the fact that they are still growing, these features are not very mature and useful. But overall I will recommend this site for others within India to shop for books - because it does a decent job of delivering books on time, has a solid collection of books and because it's a startup right here at Koramangla, Bangalore!
Pure book portals are a relatively new concept in India and it's an area with huge potential. It is pretty disappointing though that almost all the players are sticking onto the tried and tested ways of retail or online book selling and have not ventured out to try out new avenues. Typically most Indians are not tuned to buying books and most books sold at these outlets are prohibitively expensive for the common man (mango people according to Imtiaz Ali - watch this) - because of this business model most major players are restricted to a very small pie of urban corporate class. There lies a sea of opportunity for these players to reach out to the average Indian - through regional language books, second hand books and networking the many local run libraries in the thousands of small towns and villages of the country.

Branded Puja Kits! What an Idea Sir ji

2009-08-10T01:15:00.003+05:30

This idea just blew me away the first time I read about it. Here is a 27 year old who has tapped into may be a true sacred cash 'cow'! Sacred Moments is a startup by Prakash Mundra which provides packaged puja kits which he claims includes all items required to conduct a puja by even a newbie. As per the company's website, the kit for Diwali puja contains around 30 items including Laxmi Ganesha murthy, crafted coconut, ghee, cotton wick, honey, pooja book and even gangajal. I am not sure if there is a number on the worth of the spiritual market of India, but in a society where religion and rituals hold central sway and where a number of people are ignorant about the requisites of a Puja and where to procure the items from, this wonderful idea of Prakash is bound to be a runaway success.

Floating Retail Ideas in the backwaters of Kerala

2009-08-10T00:01:00.004+05:30

Nostalgia is the word as I write this piece. My mind meanders to the paddy fields of Neerettupuram, to the narrow kutcha roads where only cycles plied, to our tharavadu on the banks of the Pamba river and to my paternal grandparents (who are no more with us) with whom I spent most of my summer holidays as a kid. The world knows this place (Kuttanad) better as the backwaters of Kerala. More than it's importance as a tourist destination, the intricate system of canals and backwaters in Kerala connect hundreds of villages and is the lifeline of over a million people. Thousands of people commute to work everyday on boats, even today you can't miss seeing farmers transporting their produce to the market on their vallams (Malayalam for boat), political parties use the waterways for campaigns and it is the primary source of irrigation for the predominantly agricultural area.
Was it then surprising that the Kerala State Co-operative Consumers Federation decided to tap into the potential of these internal waterways and take their retail stores to the boat jetties of Kuttanad? The federation has launches catchy bright red and white supermarket boats christened as floating triveni in June 2009. Catch a video on the floating supermarket below:

This is a true bottom of the pyramid venture and is bound to be a roaring success. Most parts of Kuttanad is predominantly rural and has an agrarian population, typically there will be a single town catering to the consumption needs of a number of satellite villages and the villages themselves will have just a few small shops catering to the ration needs of the villagers. Floating Triveni addresses this glaring need of the BOP customer perfectly - here is a product that caters to all your shopping needs, comes to your doorstep and is priced significantly lower than other stores. It's one of those ideas which you look at and say, 'it was so obvious and why didn't anybody think about it before?' - that's the halmark of all simple ideas. A number of FMCGs in India have given lot of thought of the content, packaging and pricing of their products to suite the BOP Indian customer, but very few innovative ideas have sprung up on reaching out to the Indian consumer (we get fixated by the inflated numbers of the great Indian middle class (courtesy Pavan Varma!) that we tend to forget about the billion strong BOP customers of the country!). I can imagine other hard goods jumping into the bandwagon (boat?) soon - like agricultural equipments and fertilisers, but for sure the people of Kuttanad will be thanking the Government for the red and white floating supermarkets now and it will be really interesting to see the numbers of Consumer Fed next quarter as well as the potential clones!!

Why History is boring....

2009-08-06T04:02:00.004+05:30

I am disappointed that I was never taught about the history of my own state in school. Blame it on a national syllabus or the bias of the historians - which ever might come out true, I've been the loser! There is a negative societal bias towards history as an academic subject in our country - I wouldn't be wrong to say that not many people make a conscious choice to study history, afterall it's portrayed as boring, unintelligent and insipid. Well, blame it on the methods of teaching and the syllabus and not on the subject alone. We have never been taught the 'why' of history - why do you need to know (I would prefer to use the word 'know' in place of 'learn') 'your' history, we have never been taught to ask any questions about history and most often the history we learn has been disconnected from our immediate surrounding. All of us have a strong innate urge to question, explore and decipher the world around us. That is what makes the study of science and mathematics so fascinating for many. Whatever we study in science helps us directly in understanding the intricacies of the things (natural and synthetic) we see around and equips us with skills to explore and deconstruct them further. This builds an endless fascination of discovery. This is where I believe the teaching of history fails. The study of history is nothing but a journey into deciphering the past, a study of our social, political and economic evolution and fundamental in helping us answer the question of why are we who we are today. Fundamentally, doesn't the social and economic dynamics of our society influence our existence more than any other scientific phenomenon (other than may be biology and medicine)? It is a huge mistake to classify history in a silo and treat it as a separate subject. History can never be understood in it's entirety unless and until we under a host of other subjects like anthropology, archeology, sociology, art symbolism, geography, economics and politics - history is what you get when all these and more amalgamate, it distills into a story of evolution and paves the path to the present. It's a pity that history is not given it's due importance in our country, it's saddening that we are not taught to have an inquisitive mind about our past, to fathom into the times that shaped our today and the men from whom we have been made....May be that's the difference between learning and knowing....

Why scrapping board exams won't work in India

2009-07-04T20:10:00.000+05:30

It does look as if the UPA Cabinet is running on steroids - each minister is trying to outsmart the other with radical policy announcements and raking in a national debate every other day. Perhaps the most significant of the proposals has been the suggestion to make class 10 and 12 exams optional. It's a welcome change to have someone like Kapil Sibal heading the Human Resources Development ministry and a number of Mr. Sibal's policy statements are sure to bring in sweeping changes to the educational structure of the country. Though the intention to make the board exams optional is laudatory, I am convinced that it will not serve the purpose of reducing stress on students and parents and more importantly will not radically change the educational system of the country. Below is an interview of Mr. Sibal on the same topic by Barkha Dutt:

Here is why I think Mr. Sibal's well intented and ambitious idea will not work:

> Stress to the students and parents is not caused by the examinations per se. Examinations are just a vehicle that externalises the deeply embedded culture of social expectations and a uni-dimensional system of measuring the capability and worth of an individual.
> In the Indian social context - 'success', 'accomplishment', 'achievement' and to a large degreee the 'perceived social worth' of a student is primarily measured by the single factor of marks. As these social perceptions greatly affect the morale and esteem of an individual, the inner need to score high on the single parameter (marks) that defines these perceptions will naturally be very high.
> As George Orwell said "All animals are born equal. Some are more equal than others". I do not think that every individual is endowed with the same cerebral abilities and there will surely be people strewn all over the scale of measurement from top to bottom. This is not going to be altered by making the board examinations optional and surely this will come to glaring light for the single national examination that Mr. Sibal is proposing. So in effect, all that Mr. Sibal's proposal will do is to transfer the stress and trauma from the board examinations to the single national examination that he is mooting. We need to tweak our social perception to accept the fact that people will be differently endowed and not to treat failing in an examination as a social stigma.
> My basic argument is that what we need is a multi-dimensional scale of measuring the performance of a student. Currently, the socially and academically accepted parameter for success and achievement is solely marks - which puts extreme pressure on students to do well only on this single measure. But, if the society and more importantly colleges change the measurement of success and accomplishment to a broader array of parameters, the importance on examinations will naturally die away. For example, if colleges and society measured success solely on the dancing ability of students and if admissions were based solely (this word is emphasised because that is what we do right now, base admissions solely on the basis of marks and it does sound ridiculous with this example isnt it?) on how well they did on a national dancing examination(!), who would ever care how well a student did in science or mathematics or history? Parents would be spending a fortune on getting dance tuitions and the same stress and trauma would be present days before the dance examination. Every society has certain parameters for the measurement of social perceptions like success and altering these parameters will alter the way these perceptions are measured.
> The bane of our educational system is this uni-dimensional measurement of the accomplishment of a student. This kills all initiative and efforts to build a more balanced learning experience, because what is rewarded is non-creative linear learning. For example, even the premier colleges of India will give admission to a person who has scored 97% in his board exams, over a person who has scored 90% but has an excellent track record of extra-curricular achievements - on what basis do you say that the former student is more qualified than the latter to study in the institute? Marks are rarely a fore-bearer of success in life and it's high time we shed this uni-dimensional focus on a single parameter of measuring achievement and success.
> Mr. Sibal would do well to introduce a more balanced system of measuring the success and achievement of a student - by considering the quality of extra curricular activities, participation in inter-school competitions, depth of creative expression of the student, organisational abilities displayed, social service, evidence of research, letters of recommendation etc. This will surely revolutionise the way achievement and success is perceived in our society and surely lessen the importance and stress created by examinations.
> I will also appeal to Mr. Sibal to make teaching an attractive career option (or even a compulsory one for students from premier government colleges in line with the policy for MBBS students having to serve a rural term). It is my firm belief that the reason for the dwindling quality of education in the country is primarily due to the lack of creative and inspirational teachers at the school and most importantly at the college level. We have all grown up listening to the wonderful Indian tradition of a guru-shishya relationship, where the guru was seen next to God. This respect to the guru was not born out of him being in that position, but due to the immense knowledge, humility and concern the Guru possessed. Unfortunately, with teaching being seen as the last resort of an unemployed man and being 'branded' as an un-exciting, monotonous and stagnant profession - creative, inspirational and committed teachers are a rarity in this country. Without a change to the quality of teaching in the country, any radical policy announcement by the respected Union HRD minister will fail to reach the last thatched government school in one of the thousands of villages in the country.

P.S.: I wonder sometimes why governments do not take a systemic view and address the actual problem rather than trying to roll out piecemeal solutions that just dress the wound. Stories like that of Dr. Abraham George and of the Super 30 IIT training institute in Patna clearly show that what we desperately need is an upliftment in the quality of education through better teachers, better access to schools and a more balanced measurement of the success, accomplishments and abilities of students.

A Dialogue with Time

2009-07-04T15:46:00.000+05:30

I wrote this piece around five years ago during the final year in college. Towards the end of my college days, an acute guilt that I had taken 'time' for granted and an existential dilemna gripped me - this is what followed....

A Dialogue with Time

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Time: That’s it, time’s up.

Me: He,He….you thought I was surprised?

Time: Hmm,thought you would plead for an extension.

Me: At last, got you!

Time: Not actually, who would want to finish off their college life? That’s when you feel there’s excess of me and never give a damn to who I am.

Me: Hey, true man! So you’re offended? Even I am pretty sad I treated you this way, that’s why I am looking to move on.

Time: So that’s it? You’re fed up with life at college and want a break?

Me: Now that’s reading something which was not there at all! C’mon, the break is inevitable. You thought I was not realistic enough to understand that sadly no tangible associations are permanent?

Time: Aha, so your relationship with your family and even your closest friends is temporary?

Me: Yes, temporary depends on the time scale you are talking about. At a long enough time scale, every association is temporary. You should know better.

Time: No. My job is to run and keep on running, not to stop and think.

Me: To exist without having to think is a virtue. Choices arise when you start contemplating and you are pushed in to a complex process of decision making where you are never sure of your move. Lucky guy! You don’t have to do it. It’s a bigger virtue to know your duty and be on it.

Time: Interesting, so what if I thought one fine day that I am tired with all the running and want to be something else….let’s say a season?

Me: Ha! Ha! Now this is the problem with not thinking at all!

Time: Now what did I say to make you laugh?

Me: You never understood that ‘you’ can not change from what ‘you’ are ? ‘Time’ and ‘Season’ as entities are diametrically opposite in their existence.

Time: Trying to teach me who I am?

Me: Well, all of us love to lecture, even when we know that it is of no avail!

Time: I know who I am.

Me: Is it, then let me hear it.

Time: I am the one you humans race against, not realizing that I will outrun you always. You perish, still I move on, on and on forever.

Me: There is a big difference between who you are and who you think you are. The road to the purpose of your existence becomes clearer when both of them converge. And my dear friend, for you the gap is as far apart as the poles.

Time: So are you telling me that I am not what I think I am?

Me: I don’t want to be conclusive. What I want to tell you is that who I think you are is very different from who you think you are. That may help you get to who you really are

Time: Well, well….now do I really need to stop and think who I really am? Can’t I move on with who I think I am ?

Me: Yours is a completely different case! But for us to do that is a tragic offence. Essentially because your thought is only as good as the next one. And the process of evolving your thoughts is greatly dependant on your external environment and internal aspirations. You build a chimera and try to convince yourself that it is the reality. Sadly, you can drag your life on (even without realizing that you are dragging it on) till the very end, living in that ivory tower.

Time: So how does that matter as long as people move on in their lives?

Me: How does it matter living your life through shutting your eyes to someone and later realizing that the one you spurned was the one you loved and the one you loved was never the one for you? All you can do is sit down and rue about the lost ‘experience’ and hope life had a rewind button.

Time: Go on….

Me: It’s all about the experience. Only when you go through something will you realize its true flavour. Notions, prejudices and prejudgements often colour a picture of a hitherto un-experience reality. Sadly, we hold on to that canvas and cling to our present ‘secure’ realities refusing to change. Fear of the uncertain is primal.

But think of shedding your fears, treading the uncertain path and moving towards the experience of understanding who you really are. The ivory tower will come crashing down to the sweet chime of your inner realization. You will be born anew, look at things in new light, redefine yourself, your goals and make choices that really matter to you.
Freedom. That is when you experience real Freedom. Freedom leads to liberation and empowerment. People talk of inner peace and realization, for me they follow once you understand who you really are.
The value of both the experiences, being who you really are and who you think you are is completely different and it’s tragic if people miss to experience what really matters.

Scripting the future of the country: Abraham George and the Shanthi Bhavan School

2009-06-22T14:29:00.000+05:30

"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth."
-Aristotle.

Behold the man who acts over the man who speaks, for words die down by the tick of the clock while an act leaves a mark, a smile, a legacy, a change....My ear aches hearing the incoherent rhetoric and the superficial palliatives greased by electoral politics, dishing out the great dream of social engineering, equality and upliftment. This is an enterprise that has worked it's way for the last 60 years, having nothing to claim other than 400 million Indians loitering the slums, feasting on garbage and burning out hungry and begging. This is when people like Abraham George stand out as a beacon of inspiration and hope. Dr. George runs a school called Shanthi Bhavan for the economically challenged section of the society near Bangalore. Well there may not be anything new or radical in this, for our country is littered with institutions of charity for the downtrodden. But what makes Shanthi Bhavan truly remarkable is that it is a world class institution, comparable to any elite school in the country - it offers the excellent ICSE/ISC syllabus, has a close knit group of around 20 students per class, is completely residential and spends close to Rs. 60,000/- per student each year. Dr. George's vision is not just to provide education to these underprivileged kids, but to provide the very best education and mould them to be on par with the best in the country. At a time when education has been commoditised, when 'international' schools charge lakhs of rupees as fees and caputation fees, when the divide in the quality of education between the haves and the have nots is increasing by the day - I salute Dr. George's visionary initiative to provide the very best education to kids who may not have even seen a thatched government school. Here is a compilation on the school by Thomas Friedman:

What is most exciting is the fact that all students in it's first ICSE batch passed with first class - a feat some of the other very well established ICSE schools have not been able to emulate. This just goes on to show the glitter of human potential, there is nothing more satisfying in this world than seeing an individual blossom and reach his/her true potential and I am sure Dr. George felt that when he looked up at the results of his students!

P.S.: I am deeply compelled to compare the above initiative with NREGA programme of the UPA government. While the NREGA has been hailed as one of the most pathbreaking social empowerment programs since independance, I truly believe that an initiative to provide education to the masses like Dr. George's is more fundamental and valuable to the country than an initiative like NREGA. NREGA feeds the hungry man, but education teaches him to fish and will keep him well fed all his life. Bimal Jalan makes a wonderful argument in his book 'India's Politics' why governments don't pursue programmes with long term social impact. He argues that in India's fragmented polity, the government is lured to adopt initiatives that show immediate results and can be encashed in the ensuing elections. NREGA gives employment for 100 days and the effects of that is for everyone to see, while educating a child is a long drawn out process and by the time the results bloom, the party might be down in the dumps!! I can't but agree to Mr. Jalan more here!!

Organisations as Schools for it's employees

2009-03-27T01:39:00.000+05:30

Most organisations that I have seen (or heard about in first person experience) do not have a robust employee development program. I maintain the proposition that it is the responsibility of each organisation to cater to the career development of it's employees - it's more like an extension of the guiding philosophy of an educational institution. A true school should progressively look at moulding it's students, provide an environment conducive to reflection and learning and drive the students to realise their inner potential. To say that corporate organisations would do well to adopt this philosophy might sound a bit far fetched, but let us examine the idea bit more before completely rejecting it.
In the knowledge industry space there cannot be an argument on the fact that the cerebral power of an organisation's employees is the only true value proposition. People make the difference - people can break or make projects or products. The most fascinating aspect about human potential is that it's limitless - the depth that the human mind and brain fathoms, the ideas that originate from it and the power of human initiative, will and enterprise makes it may be the world's most valuable renewable resource! And the best part is that your employees do not depreciate, rather they appreciate with age and experience. The Law of Scarcity is one of the fundamental principles of economics - the value of an item is directly proportional to it's scarcity - human potential describes the extreme case of the Law of Scarcity where there is only a single unit of the product available in market - each of your employee is unique.
But how many organisations realise this fact and put a premium on the realisation and development of it's most valuable limitless resource?. Think of the possibilities - if you provide an environment that is conducive to the creative growth of your employees you could have an organisation that continuously reinvents itself and ride on the enterprise and human potential of your employees.
Another analogy is that to gardening. The intent of a gardener might be to make money selling the produce of his garden, but the only way he can do that is to attend to the flowers in his garden, nurture them, provide them with the best conditions for growth and reap the benefit. This is exactly what organisations in the knowledge space need to do. (I need to point out here that the Indian IT company MindTree's chief executive is called a Gardener!).
So it is my staunch belief that the adoption of a philosophy similar to educational institutions will only benefit corporate organisations. We need organisations that put a premium on moulding the thought and potential of it's employees. I believe that organisations are still obsessed with Customers and Processes while forgetting that the presence of motivated and driven employees are prerequisites to both of these measures. I urge you to just reflect on one thought - human potential that is limitless, renewable, appreciating and indomitable - what else matches up to it?

Varun Gandhi's greatest mistake: Lessons we can learn

2009-03-26T20:46:00.000+05:30

Varun Gandhi made a master stroke in Pilibhit - and with one single speech he changed the course of his political career forever. The venomous communal nature of his speech has been condemned and discussed across the nation for the last many weeks. My intention is not to debate whether the speech was communal or not. (First off, this post is written under the assumption that the tape seen on TV is not doctored and it was indeed Varun Gandhi who made those statements!) Take couple of minutes to see the video below - Varun Gandhi's statement after the controversy erupted -

For me this act of Varun Gandhi where he passionately defends himself and tries to absolve from the crime is a bigger weakness of the individual than his speech at Pilibhit. He might have been compelled by the situation, driven by the impending elections (according to some an admission of his mistake would have been suicidal for his career and the party prospects) to defend his stand vehemently - but he lost a golden opportunity to set his record straight, to uphold the desired moral values and set a precedence of honest, sincere and straight politics.
The ability to acknowledge one's mistakes and accept a view different from one's position is such a critical value for success in teams. It's so common for multiple teams to work on the same project. Individual teams in a project will have their own individual dynamics, culture and power structure and when these different teams come together to work in a single project it's not surprising that there will be glaring differences. There could be some very obvious reasons for this rift including communication problems, difference in skill levels, different management style and managers etc. But it's been my experience that the inability of teams to reflect on their performance vis a vis the overall project goals and unwillingness to accept their mistakes is a major reason for the failure of a number of multi-team projects. It is not uncommon for people and teams to make mistakes, but it will snowball into a tragedy if the individual or team does not acknowledge that a mistake has been made, or still uphold that nothing has gone wrong. There are multiple effects of this kind of a behaviour in a multi-team environment:

1. It distorts the actual progress of the project and stalls any rational anaysis of the cause of failure.
2. The inability of a team to reflect on it's actual performance and failure is a closed approach and will lead to the status quo being continued. This eliminates the opportunity to analyse the shortcomings in the team and start a process of revival.
3. It will build animosity amongst various teams in the project and will bring down the morale of the team.

Reflecting more on it I realise that rarely have we been taught to accept defeat and acknowledge that making mistakes are alright. Our education systems (that is the Indian Education system) is highly intolerant of mistakes and failures - mistakes are treated with a rampant cane culture in schools, parents compete and terrorise their children to succeed and it is a social stigma to fall back in the race of life (yeah how many essays and speeches have I started with the line 'In this highly competitive world where everything is a rat race....'). But this attitude is suicidal when it comes to working together on a project or a mission and unfortunately many projects have fallen prey to precisely that attitude.
Whenever I have faced this scenario, I have always yearned for people who can take a larger systemic view who would put the success of the project above proving their point. It would be a dream to have a team like that with individuals who put the project above personal differences and ego. More and more I have got to work in multiple teams I have understood that the energy derived out of the synergy of all teams involved is much greater than the energies of all the teams combined together - and I hope that this value prevails in most teams - the willingness to say 'Yes I was wrong and now let's see how we can do it better'.

Will the multiple captains formula work for Kolkota Knight Riders

2009-03-26T01:37:00.000+05:30

I watched with much amusement the press conference by John Buchchanan and Sourav Ganguly today - thanks to one particular news channel with a bengali lead anchor streaming the video almost every alternate minute! What was Buchchanan thinking when he came up with the strategy of having no fixed captain? I do agree that T20 cricket is very different from the other forms of the game but did that call for an experiment of this radical nature?
It's excellent to theoretically preach that every member of the team should be a leader, but over all these years I have never seen self navigating teams - team work and leadership are entirely different entities for me and strongly tied to the nature of an individual and you really cannot push a person to be a leader especially in sports. Team Sports like any other activity that warrants a very high degree of discipline (for example the army) works best when there are fixed roles and responsibilities for the team members - lack of clarity in the role of an individual is one of the leading reasons for dissatisfaction and failure of most teams. Another major reason why I believe the case for multiple captains will not work is because of the power and idea imbalance that it will bring to the team. The influence of a captain is well illustrated in cricket - MS Dhoni, Kevin Pieterson and Shane Warne for some - the teams under these individuals have succeeded because they brought a certain level of energy, trust and confidence in the players and developed a motivated and loyal squad under them. I wonder how and when Buchchanan would decide to change the captains - when the team suffers couple of losses under one guy would he pick another person from the team as the captain? This is going to be disasterous and demotivating for the entire team and the new captain will also be playing under immense pressure to win and save his face!
Howsoever good individuals might be, for the team to succeed the presence of an inspirational leader is extremely essential and John Buchchanan's strategy is doomed to fail.

Innovation is a matter of organisational culture

2009-03-22T23:00:00.000+05:30

Innovation is undoubtedly the most overused cliche ('value addition' would be a close competitor) in modern management jargon. Infinite media and printing space has been dedicated on this single subject and I am sure many companies and individuals have made millions selling that idea! But I believed that getting an entire organisation to innovate together was almost an impossibility until I joined TESCO. I had two pertinent questions about organisational innovation:

1. Individual enterprise vs. Organisational innovation. Will a bunch of independently innovative employees lead to an innovation organisation? This is a very common predicament - every organisation will have a set of employees who think ahead of the curve, ideating on new changes and opportunities for the organisation - but will the mere existence of such people without proper support from the organisation lead to any meaningful act of innovation?

2. How do you translate innovations to quantifiable business opportunities? Innovation like most other organisational fads tend to remain just a rhetoric in most organisations. We are vehemently endorsed to innovate - but what do we innovate upon and how? How can an organisation move from mere rhetoric to generating ideas with an impact on the bottom line?

The other day when I walked up to my office - I saw the entire campus strewn with different types of hats with the caption 'It's Back'. It took me a while to understand that the hat campaign was referring to Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats concept and was the publicity campaign for the Innovation Summit at TESCO Hindustan Service Centre (HSC). The Innovation Summit poses real life business problems ranging from Identifying Old Stock in our stores to automating the cab booking processes in HSC, to the employees and has resulted in ideas that has saved hundreds of thousands of pounds for the organisation. The support that the summit receives from the top management is amazing and that I believe is the real wind beneath the wings. Initial ideas that are submitted are discussed and nurtured and follows a process of elimination with the participation of even the company directors. During the last Innovation Summit - I found an energy akin to what I used to see in my college during campus fests, at HSC - truly then I came to realise that Innovation is a matter of the organisational culture.
Well the business advantages the organisation has received is one aspect of it - the more important part is the air of innovation and change that it brings to work. The current Peoplesoft project that I am working on is the most daringly different and innovative one I've been associated with and every person who has come to TESCO from another company vouches that. I feel a culture where people are looking on a daily basis to improve their processes and adopt the latest technologies, a culture where everyone from a developer to a manager is eagerly interested and nurtures any small process improvement is a true indicator of an organisation that innovates.
So here's what I've learnt - 1. Individuals ideating alone can result in small process improvements or inventions but never in an organisation wide culture of innovation. This will demotivate and kill any enterprising spirit of the employees. 2. A formal process that supports and encourages innovation and may be the solving of specific problems with a very strong support of the management is critical to translate the jargon of innovation to financial benefits (interestingly a sizeable sum is kept aside to implement and pilot the ideas generated by employees in TESCO. This shows a strong commitment from the organisation to act on the employee's ideas). 3. Employees need to internalise the process of innovation and it has to be encouraged at all levels of the company and 4. Tying Innovation to the rewards and recognition mechanism as well as the appraisal process will only help nurture this value.

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest!

2009-03-17T00:56:00.000+05:30

The dissonance of mutual distrust and hate pervade the air around us - India particularly has been marred by segregation and differentiation on every possible identity - caste, religion, language and region. It almost feels as if people love to hate and the roots of one's existence is determined by the vociferousness and intensity of one's allegiance to singular identities. Can we dream of a time when love, respect and tolerance would ride over mutual animosity and hatred? Yes, I am tired of hearing how Islam is the only perfect religion, how Hindus need to rebuild the temples destroyed by Muslim invaders, how Biharis are taking away the jobs of Marathis, how a statue of Christian Charlie Chaplin cannot be erected near a Hindu temple, how the world is divided into us and them, how the great grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru will cut the fingers of anyone who talks against Hinduism, how fakirs can be answered by street warfare and bombs, how we should hate and distrust each other and live in our own self construed insecurities.
In 1955, in the wake of the threat of the Nuclear Bombs - world's eleven eminent scientists and intellectuals came out with a declaration for peace known as the Einstein-Russel manifesto, signed by none other than Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. Reading through the manifesto, I felt that it's relevant today as it was 54 years ago. Here is a short passage from the manifesto -

"There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death."

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest - in our times botched by parochial and communal interests can we do that?

Third Front on the Podium?

2009-03-16T23:22:00.000+05:30

The Indian Political scene has already warmed up to the impending General Elections. As it looks increasingly possible that neither the UPA nor the NDA will muster enough numbers to form a government in the centre - the Third Front has been creating much ruckus. The Third Front projecting itself as a secular non-BJP, non-Congress alternative formally took shape after a meeting at Tumkur near Bangalore recently. But I am extremely confident that the third front is not a viable alternative at all. Simply put, it is just an alliance of convenience by a number of the regional parties - an alliance without a central leadership, without any manifesto and without any direction and clue who will be with whom after the elections. That is exactly the reason why players like Mayawati of the BSP, Naveen Patnaik of the BJD, Jayalalitha of the AIADMK etc. have not sided with the third front yet. Already political commentators have raised the point that the front will break up when the question of prime ministership will be raised. If hypothetically the third front by some miracle garner enough votes to stake a claim to the centre and if a concensus Prime Minister is decided upon, will the government survive for long? My hunch is a big no. Just pan back to 1977 when all cards were highly touted against the Congress following the acrimony of the emergency - there was a very strong reason for all non-Congress parties to come together to protect the Indian democracy. Together they did come - the Socialist Party, Jana Sangh, Bharatiya Lok Dal and Congress (O) and came to power with Morarji Desai as the Prime Minister. Yet, the coalition collapsed and could not last through the entire 5 year term. The same story repeated in 1989 when the Third Front of that time came to power with VP Singh and later Chadrashekhar as the Prime Ministers and collapsed by 1991. Unfortunately another attempt by the non-Congress, non-BJP parties to form the government in 1996 gave way to the formation of the United Front government under the hitherto unknown Deve Gowda who was followed by I.K. Gujral as the Prime Minister and the country again went to polls in 1998. Even in 1977 when the wave was strongly against the Congress(I) and there was a purpose for unity amongst the non-Congress parties - the Janata Dal coalition could garner only less than 300 seats and did not last the entire term. In 2009 - when the polity is far more fragmented and when there is no real ideological factor uniting the parties of the Third Front what can we expect from them?
My argument is that the Third Front is unfortunately just not big enough to garner enough numbers to stake claim to a stable government in the centre.The power equations are too complex for any meaningful middleground to be reached and I see the Third Front just as a parade of potential coalition partners for either the Congress or the BJP. Except for the Left parties, there isn't any party that swears by any ideology in the Third Front - so inevitably after the elections they will take the best offer at hand, for they will have no other choice - power is afterall the best aphrodisiac as Kissinger once said!

World after 20 years?

2009-02-23T03:07:00.000+05:30

I am a regular viewer of the TED Talks on their YouTube channel. I came across this highly charged talk where the speaker said something that struck me deeply -

'If you want to know how the world will be 20 years from now, ask the kindergarten teachers'.

You can catch the entire talk here:

Saffron XML, Hindu Coding!

2009-02-15T15:08:00.000+05:30

'Election PR management and marketing' has to be a huge market in India. Every time a major election comes calling we see extremely innovative campaigns from various parties, some of them like the modi masks, phone with Vajpayee's messages, VCD propaganda by the BJP, youtube campaigns etc. Most of these campaigns have targetted the general public and might have had varying dgrees of success.
But, what do you feel when you are in the w3c schools website (w3c schools is the world's largest free e-learning site on web technologies and a pioneer in building most of the latest web protocols) and suddenly you see a banner urging you to vote for the BJP? I can see that the BJP has done some clever market segmentation and strategically placed the 'LK Advani for PM' campaign in one of the most popular technology sites on the web. But I found it extremely intrusive and out of place.
'Context' is very important for our mind to form an impression about a campaign. An out and out political campaign is not something I expect to see in a pure technology blog. Moreover, I cannot associate the image of 'internet technology, web2.0' etc with a party like BJP. For me the word 'internet and the world wide web' throws up images of freedom, creativity, expression, collaboration, a world without boundaries and discrimination etc. and on the other hand the term 'BJP' brings to my mind images in complete contadiction to the earlier term - 'religious fanaticism', 'fear', 'discrimination and non-tolerance', 'hatred', 'me put in a jail and being watched and dictated all the time', 'control', 'idea paralysis'.
When your brain receives contradictory images and signals - it should go into a state of confusion and denial. That's exactly what happened to me after I saw that extremely brash and intrusive BJP campaign on a w3c schools page. Sample these images and think whether the w3c campaign by the BJP will ever appeal to you:

Enticement of Hindu religious sentiments through the Rath Yatra and the destruction of Babri Masjid catapulted BJP from a party that had merely 2 seats in the lok sabha in 1984 to 119 seats in 1991.

Though the main party has toned down on it's 'Hindutva' propaganda after it started backfiring in recent times, the fact remains that BJP is part of a saffron conglomorate deeply rooted in the idea of a Hindu nation with labyrinths of radical, violent and armed idealogues.

And there you go - Advani featured on the w3c schools website. Sorry Mr. aspiring PM - I can't associate you with anything progressive, leave alone a 'western' website that advocates free learning and creativity.
Reposition yourself as a tolerant, forward looking, inclusive party that does not breed religious animosity and may be then this campaign might work. But, that is a long drawn out process and till then you should be rethinking your web campaign strategy.

Treating freshers in an IT project: The Outlier perspective

2009-02-08T18:09:00.000+05:30

I am a strong believer in the power of human potential and creativity - I believe that it's more important to have the right people than the right process, moreover the only true asset and competitive advantage of an IT organisation is the accrued knowledge and attitude of it's workforce. How do we build an organisation where knowledge and professional excellence is valued more important than anything else? In this post, I would like to focus on the starting tier of every organisation - the fresh recruits from college and their utilisation strategies.
Almost every top Indian IT organisation that I know of, has excellent induction and training facilities for new recruits. The training facilities of TCS, Infosys and Satyam are world class and caters to it's workforce from across the globe. Every new recruit to these companies will have to go through and qualify a two to three month long induction course. The recruits are given intensive training on fundamentals of computer science, software engineering (considering that they could be from backgrounds as varied as Civil or Textile engineering), communication skills, business etiquette and are made to specialise in one technology (popular options include Java, .NET, Mainframes, Oracle Apps and SAP). All is well the training ends - now after the training the recruits will be allocated to projects (not necessarily in the technology they specialised in!) and the less fortunate among them will have to occupy the famed 'bench' ('Bench' is one of the most despicable and demeaning words in the IT industry for me - it brings forth images of a poultry farm where cattle is fed and kept without doing any physical work in the hope that buyers will come in the future. Talent rots on bench and these PCMMI Level 5 organisations virtually have no 'bench management' policies in place. This deserves a separate post).
The primary focus of this post is to discuss how fresher's are utilised in a project and the pivotal role played by the first project in launching the career of an IT professional.
Training and a live project are two completely different ball games and it has been my experience that one learns more in a project than any long and intensive training course. There are potentially two ways in which you can utilise them - be cautious about their abilities, not load any complex and difficult tasks on them, give them further process training, let them shadow with experienced resources (let them 'feel, see and learn'!) and allocate the easiest (and in turn the most trivial and mundane) task. The other more radical way of handling them is to 'throw them in the lion's den' - give challenges to them from the first day, include them in solving difficult problems, ask them to work on technologies that they have not been trained on and stretch them beyond their limit. Which strategy works best?
Common wisdom and experience has shown that the freshers like tender flowers need to be handled with care and thus the first approach is the most suitable when it comes to utilising raw talent. But, this is a defeatist approach. If the organisation aims at building people with an attitude to take up any technical challenge, people who will not wilt under pressure and people who will solve problems - they will need to look at adopting approach two to groom the freshers.
The capacity to learn and mould one's mind is the maximum when one starts his/her career and the role played by the first project in harnessing the potential of an individual is immense. Malcom Gladwell in one of his talks mentions about an experiment done in a US school. The school used to segregate a class based on the intelligence of students and used to have different batches for different groups of students. The school did an interesting exercise when they put some average performing students in the high IQ batch and gave them the same intensive training. To their surprise, they found that the average performing students were scoring as well as the high IQ students once they received the same coaching. This principle is written all over Galdwell's new book Outlier which I reviewed in the previous post. My argument for a strategy to utilise fresher's in an IT project is drawn from the same line. Putting up challenges and difficult problems in front of an eager mind all charged up to prove him/herself is the best way to groom an individual. The confidence and never say die attitude that this bestows on the individuals will remain with them forever.
There is another point to it - the incremental advantage that knowledge and experience gives an individual. Let's do a thought exercise of two fresher's 'A' and 'B' who come from the same college and who got the same training - utilised in entirely different ways in a project. 'A' is not given any meaningful work and is assigned to monitor a system and report any issues with the same, he is also asked to write up documents for the development done by his senior team mates. 'B' on the other hand is asked to develop a piece of a critical interface with a third party vendor. In turn, he has to learn a technology that he has no exposure to and meet a strict deadline. Unarguably the learning and experience of 'B' is much greater than that of 'A' and by the end of the project. The initial headstart that 'B' has got will put him exponentially above 'A'. Managers would prefer 'B' to 'A' for his 'skills', 'attitude' and 'experience' in the next assignment and this trend will continue - 'B' enjoying incremental advantage over his counterpart simply due to the better exposure and utilisation he got in the first project. Interestingly, the book McKinsey Way(find the entire PDF version of the book here) which talks about the consulting strategies of McKinsey emphasizes the importance of giving tough and customer facing assignments to fresh recruits.
I am convinced that it's not just necessary having excellent induction programs for freshers, but its paramount that the grooming is continued atleast in the first project of each fresher and that organisation will be able to reap rich dividends in the future.

Malcom Gladwell's Latest: Outliers

2009-02-08T17:16:00.000+05:30

There are some books you buy after flipping through the pages a hundred times, weighing the cost and benefit attached to buying it before making the decision to pay the buck, but there are other books that you can just pick from the shelf and know that it will be worth your money. Malcom Gladwell's book fall in the latter category.
Gladwell has a knack of drawing uncommon conclusions from seemingly trivial data (like this talk titled 'What we can learn fromm Spaghetti sauce'). Though not as prolific as his previous books, Outlier has the signature Gladwell class. The book does a clean job in analysing the secret behind genius and successful men and is built on the premise that success is more a factor of hardwork (or meaningful work as he terms it) and cultural factors than mere individual talent. He profiles icons like Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, the Beatles, Mozart etc. to drive in the point how passionate and selfless hardwork, practice and timing(Gladwell analyses the birth years of Gates, Paul Allen and Jobs and the three of them were born in 1955!) contributes to success more than genius. I particularly liked the section where Gladwell analyses why students from East Asia do exceedingly well in academics in comparison to those from US or Europe, especially in math (Chapter titled Rice Paddies and Math tests). He puts the credit on rice farming - he argues that rice farming is one of the mot riskiest, labour intensive and sapping forms of agriculture and typically rice farming cultures have a tradition of hard work ingrained in them. It's a true gem when he goes on to compare the proverbs of different cultures and establishes the pivotal role played by culture in forming the innate qualities of an individual. (He compares Russian and Chinese proverbs. The Russian proverb says 'If God does not bring it, the Earth will not give it', while the Chinese one says 'No food without blood and sweat').
Gladwell's writing style is simple and terse, that all his books make a light and fast reading! So, the next time you are at a bookstore and happen to see Outlier staring at you, you shouldn't think twice before taking it home! It's an interesting read with a very important message - work harder for your success!
Here's the author himself talking about his book

The death of credibility - The Satyam effect

2009-02-07T14:13:00.000+05:30

I worked for Satyam for 24 months. I was not overtly proud of the 'brand' during my association with the organisation because there was nothing that really stood out (except for the Knowledge Management practices of the company - they were excellent) and captured my loyalty. What happened with the firm is greatly disturbing and a lot of media space has already been spent on dissecting and sensationalising the Raju brothers and their adventures with 53,000 employees and lakhs of shareholders. For me, what has happened in Satyam is not an aberration at all, contrary to the opinion of a number of analysts. Unfortunately, ours is a country ridden with underhand dealings, corruption, unethical practices in almost all spheres including education and healthcare and why wouldn't strains of that virus be present in the IT industry also? The Satyam fiasco is the Black Swan of the Indian IT industry - a similar expose tomorrow will just validate the existence of the black swan. Moreover, Ramalinga Raju is not a technologist, he comes from the gruesome construction and textile industries and is it any aberration that he swindled money to where his heart really was?
But what this entire episode has done to me is to dispel the myth of credibility. How could an entire system - stuffed with the best minds and organisations of the world have a collective failure? How could one of the best auditing firms in the world(which only recruits from select IIMs in the country!), high profile directors including deans of reputed business schools, independent stock analysts and investment bankers(yes, the reputed i-bankers!) who spend all their time analysing the 'fundamentals' of a company, international standards organisations (Satyam even won an award for Corporate Governance!!), national regulators and top managers fail to figure out the tricks of one crooked mind? Not for a month, not for a year, but for seven long years! How come their above average intelligence, world class processes, diverse experience, ivy league business school education and years of research failed to detect this fraud? And what credibility can I attach to their words and advices in the future?
Credibility plays an extremely important role in a number of decisions that we make. Brands are entirely built on the foundation of credibility, perceptions, judgements and stereotypes are formed based on credibility, our choices are influenced greatly by it. Why do the best companies recruit only from IIMs and IITs? Why would you pay a premium to buy a branded shirt? Why do we even trade 'respect' based on credibility? Why are even marriages based on the credibility of families and the lineage? Why are even votes cast on the 'credibility' of political families?
We attach a 'credibility value' to each of these symbols or brands and the market value of each commodity, service or individual is to a large extent decided just by this credibility index! Our minds are tuned to think that an IITian 'ought' to be better than a local college grad, that management consultants from the big four 'ought' give more insights than a normal employee of the organisation, that a movie that has won numerous awards 'ought' to be better than one that even didn't get nominated and the list goes on.
We put the brand and the 'perceived' value of a product, service or an individual above the 'actual' value that it delivers and thereby inflates the price attached to it (as well as the risk involved in the investment). But for me, it's an error of judgment, an error too costly to be entertained, an error that can change our perceptions, prejudices and way we look at things. Everytime I've taken an interview, I've found myself forming perceptions about the candidate based on his college and organisations he/she has worked with, we all see the market and analysts forming blind perceptions about organisations based on the numbers it brings out, I've seen people deciding marriages simply because the family lineage is good.
And that is exactly what Ramalinga Raju took advantage of. He knew that the markets blindly looked at 'credibility value' of an organisation to decide the stock price. This meant having a board stuffed with 'reputed' individuals, bringing out stunning numbers, increasing the workforce, creating flashy offices and even investing in corporate social responsibility initiatives. The markets were hoodwinked by such a think curtain of credibility and Raju pulled off his tricks.
It's an extremely interesting subject because it not only influences share prices of companies, but more importantly our personal relationships and day to day decisions. We need to train our mind to see through the chimera created by the credibility value that we attach to objects and individuals and perceive their true worth.

Lessons from IPL

2008-05-25T00:05:00.000+05:30

The flavour of the season is undoubtedly the Indian Premier League. The most phenomenal aspect of the tournament has been the spotlight borne by the younger players while the experienced lot have been in the dark. A point worth considering is - did it take the IPL to make so bright stars out of the Gonis and Abhishek Nayars? Weren't they playing as well as this before the IPL also? And more importantly, how important is reputation when it comes to on field performance?

What the IPL has shown us is that players with innate ability just needs a platform to showcase their skills. There are players like Manpreet Goni who have not played any significant first class cricket, but has been one of the stellar performers in the tournament so far. Again, it just goes to underline the fact that raw talent and ability always talks louder than hard grounded experience.
This is a huge learning for everyone involved in dealing with people. It can be a big mistake to refrain from giving somebody the big chance, just because the person has not performed on big stage. The number of years of experience may not just be the correct indicator of potential performance. All our traditional organisations work on the model where experience is heavily relied upon, this may be explains why so many Indian IT firms promote satisfactory underperformance. Rather, the secret is to identify potential stars, groom them and give them the right, big opportunity and reap all the benefits!!

The RM Syndrome

2008-05-23T09:30:00.000+05:30

This is indeed common knowledge and written about in length, but the enormity of its impact on everything related to people in an organisation is so huge that is deserves a separate post. The RM Syndrome is the phenomenon where people insensitive Reporting Managers bring down employee morale and productivity. Let me call them 'Cyclopes' - well the classic definition seems to fit the bill almost perfectly! The single most important reason for employee dissatisfaction in Indian IT firms is the RM syndrome.
I am yet to come across an Indian IT firm that has understood the true implications of this phenomenon and has put in measures to contain it. As long as that does not happen, organisational level policy and mission statements will remain in the books forever and never trickle down to the work stations.

Case for employee motivation in IT Maintenance and Support projects

2008-02-18T01:55:00.000+05:30

Projects in the software service sector fall into the following broad categories - consulting, implementation, upgrade/migration, IT maintenance and support. A mature IT service organisation will be executing projects under all the above categories at any given point of time. Studies show that a large chunk of the work carried out in India fall under the last two categories of IT Maintenance and support. The nature of maintenance and support projects (especially the latter) is much different from an implementation or pure consulting. Support projects are in most cases long term engagements that involve the monitoring and maintenance of the existing IT infrastructure of a client. This is not high end work and in most cases involves going through or executing a series of predefined sequence of actions to accomplish a task. Moreover a number of systems being supported are highly stable, and thus will not involve any significant technical intervention nor creative problem solving. Thus, a maintenance and support project in most cases reduces to a laborious routine monitoring job. Moreover, the scope of learning is limited by the system itself, project associates have to act within the boundaries of the client IT system and rarely get an overall view of the implementation life cycle or the intricacies of technology as majority of the time they are required only to work on the already developed system.
So it is little wonder that employees look down at IT maintenance and support projects. Considering the narrow scope of learning and the drab nature of work, this type of projects are the least preferred in the IT industry. Typically because of this motivation of employees involved in a maintenance and support project need to be given special attention.
The argument of this thesis is the following:
Software engineers involved in a development/ implementation project have an internal motivation due to the sheer nature of challenges offered by the work. Moreover these projects offer significant learning opportunities which will go a long way in enhancing the future career prospects of the associates involved. At the same time IT maintenance and support projects offer very limited learning avenues and offer a monotonous work environment. Lack of meaningful work, engagement in repetitive tasks and closed learning opportunities will automatically drive down motivation of employees involved in this kind of projects. Thus it is my argument that special attention need to be given to maintenance and support projects to ensure that proper employee development and motivation thrives. The organisation has a responsibility towards building the careers of its associates. Employees cannot be seen as a medium to achieve a better bottomline, it is their value creation activities that pump in revenue. Thus, as project allocation is a pejorative of the organisation and as an employee involved in a maintenance and support project could have been well part of a development project, it is the responsibility of the organisation to ensure that associates in a maintenance project are not handicapped by a lack of adequate learning opportunities.

Critical Attrition and the Organisational Faultline

2008-02-14T20:08:00.000+05:30

How do you measure the effectiveness of your HR department and policies? By the attrition rate? A random Employee Delight Index? Industry wide surveys? Resumes received per day? Slot occupied during recruitment drives on Day Zero? Whatever the unit might be, the department has come across as an administrative policy machine, disconnect from the ground realities and vibes of the employees.
It might be a lofty idea to keep every single employee 'happy' (amidst the claims by many HR practitioners that it is impossible to keep an employee happy) in a mammoth organisation. But the HR practice is not a statistical exercise where the satisfaction of the majority can be taken as an acceptable criteria of success, the vision of the HR function should be to address the aspirations and concerns of every employee in the organisation.
A policy or an idea is only as good as its implementation....and this is exactly where the HR operations in many organisations faulter. A number of organisations fail badly in understanding the aspirations, abilities and skills of its employees and rarely succeed in drawing up any meaningful career path. This is extremely important in the case of attrition of high performing employees which i would refer to as critical attrition (another irony is that a number of high performing employees are not recognised as high performing by the organisation at all!). For companies in the knowledge space, critical attrition will mean loss of significant tacit knowledge and more importantly decreased ability to create incremental business and organisational value which will ultimately reflect negatively on the overall organisational performance. For me, critical attrition is thus one of the most important challenges an organisation in the knowledge space faces. Critical attrition is never a result of an impulsive decision, rather its the culmination of derogatory employee relation practices. That is good news!! For it implies that there is an organisational faultline, a gap in the organisation's people practices.
I would not attribute it to the HR Team nor their policies, rather the HR Team rarely has a significant impact on the 'experience' of employees in the organisation - it all boils down to your manager, your team lead.
A Team Lead is the most significant component in this chain of events and relationships. He is directly responsible for the development and satisfaction of an organisation's employees and acts as the first envoy of organisational representation to the employees. It's my take that the organisational honchos as well as the HR Team clearly underestimates the role played by the Team Lead in employee satisfaction and rarely focus on providing people management skills to Team Leads.
In the current scenario, a person with 2 or 3 years or experience can be leading a team, irrespective of his/her experience it is imperative to ensure that any employee who assumes the role of a team leader has the right people management skills and is given the authority to do things which he deems necessary to contribute to the development of his/her reportees. I do not know of many organisations in the knowledge space who do that. Organisations are obsessed with quality and process compliance, they ensure that team leads attend programs that make them conversant with the organisation's process standards, but I am yet to come across an organisation that mandates that any team lead has to undergo a People Management course.
I am sure that by making every leader aware of the right People Management practices and by ensuring that they practice it (we could have an HR Audit in the lines of a Quality Audit!!),organisations can go a long way in containing Critical attrition.

All Indian IT Companies are not body shops - All Software Jobs are not monotonous

2008-02-14T05:37:00.000+05:30

Yes, that is a statement!!
It has continually amazed me when people in most IT firms in India chant the same line 'IT is so monotonous, get stuck doing the same rote work'. Don't know if its negative propaganda or general disillusionment, but something is wrong when fresh recruits spend week days in the training rooms of their new companies and weekends in the training rooms of management entrance coaching centers.
Some random thoughts -
# A practical 'orientation towards working in IT' required, either during the training period or before the recruits join the organisation? Very little is done towards spelling out how dynamic the industry is and how fast one can grow professionally. Perception Management has become an imperative.
#Branding the IT Profession? I would say why arent we on it yet?!
#Can this be an effective method to cut down on entry level attrition?