Mondays are 'bad' days

Mondays truly are 'bad' days. Don't get me wrong. BAD is an acronym I use for Beautiful And Demanding. Actually, Mondays set the tone for the entire week, and I take extra care to ensure they go smooth.

So was today. Let me share my day's learnings!

• When a company head takes a report, especially marketing reports, he/she wants material facts that shape his opinions and future decisions. So observant individuals win hands down here!
• 'Never make assumptions while working'. Good revision of basic wisdom.
• A detailed counselling of a manager responsible for several work-groups highlighted some key issues -
• Efficiency versus Effectiveness - the perennial debate - we spent some time assessing what percentage of the manager's time was being spent on what.
• Final conclusion after an hour long brainstorming - the staff reporting to him were not clear about the extent to which they were supposed to take ownership of their own work (till the last deliverables)
• We concluded that at least 25% of his time was to be spent on "effectivenss" rather than being obsessed with "efficiency" alone.
• I was reminded of the axiom - if you wish to chop a tree, spend half the day sharpening your axe. Today was the "sharpening the axe" day for my colleague.
• Three other incidents in the day reminded me (and my senior colleagues) of one of the strongest management principles ever "What gets measured gets done". This is so important a truth, that I will treat it separately in another post also.
• I took a personal tuition in the evening for almost 2 hours (from an external IT professional I respect a lot due to his practical expertise) on basic Internet related issues.
• Actually, for quite some time, I was feeling hamstrung while taking some IT decisions (costly ones!) due to lack of authoritative insights into internet issues. So decided to get myself coached today. It really helped. The guy was kind enought to come over and coach me, as I sat with my diary, noting all crucial points. (If you are a student reading this - remember - there is nothing as powerful as properly prepared, neat & clean handwritten notes)
• I now can ask sensible questions while deciding issues related to : Webservers, Dataservers, ISPs, Domain Hosting, Streaming servers, Mailservers, Spam, etc.
• For anyone who understands what capitalism is (creating a business model that removes some inefficiency from the system), here is a big opportunity. Develop some kind of technology for the neon-signages that takes care of their going "phut" in bits and pieces every time Lord Indra smiles. You have a multi-crore idea ready buddy.

Signing off, here is a powerful thought for tomorrow. I found it quite moving in the film "The Untouchables". The veteran policeman Malone (Sean Connery) judges the newcomer to Chicago Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) who has been sent to get the dreaded Al Capone. Here goes the conversation -
Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I'm saying is, what are you prepared to do?
Ness: Anything and everything in my power.
Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do?

~ 

Sunday = Mischief & Fun

Sunday = Mischief & Fun

(so many young people keep writing to me seeking career success tips.. this post is for all those young souls seeking corporate nirvana)

Time for some fun. Oh no, seriously speaking.. here are SEVEN sure-shot ways for you my dear reader.. follow these and await guaranteed doom. Trust me!

1. 
   Be an excuses-person. Always find some excuse for why you were unable to do a thing successfully. It could be heavy airconditioning that slowed your brain-cells down, or even the colour of the cockroach that ran across your workdesk that turned you off.
2. Be internally focussed always. Never think from your customers' perspective. Customers are duds, after all. Life is made for things grander and subtler than quality for what's paid for.
3. Never plan in totality. Focus only on what you were asked to do, and not the whole picture. So if you were asked to give the starting speech in a major event, make sure you do not even visit the venue once to get a 'total' feel of it. After all, that's not your job, right? The Event Manager gets paid for that.
4. Carry an entitlement mindset. Always demand rights, privileges and opportunities. Never realise that they come only when you have delivered something of value to others. The constitution of our great nation has guaranteed some rights. If we won't demand the same, who will? The aborigines?
5. Close your mind to successes & lessons they imply. Whenever you see someone doing really well, blame it on the stars! After all, you are brighter than her. She cracked it by sheer serendipity. Maybe the Ursa Major was exceptionally well-aligned in her favour. It will be better to invest in an astrologer than in the 6-sigma course.
6. Never believe in Kaizen. It is for the Japanese. We are not Japanese. Errors must be made repeatedly to have some meaningful learnings from them. Of course, if only your boss could empower you enough to enable this. Simple soul!
7. Produce work that's truly below standard. It is only when we lose our touch with material reality that higher realisations can seep in. What's the point after all, the long-term point, in getting all spellings, grammar, structure right in a report, when the Sun is surely - ultimately - going to turn into a red giant swallowing up mother Earth? Of course, the idiotic team leader could not understand this profound spiritual reality. How we wish he had a mother who could explain this to him while he was growing up!

So let's get cracking. We got work to do!
~

Spiritual side up!

What do Roger Harrop, Brian Chernnet and Dr John DesMarteau have in common?

They are all high-achievers in their respective fields, they all were visitors to India, and came to our campuses recently. And above all, they were happy to see the spiritual side of the students and institute. They appreciated seemingly simple acts like i) lighting-of-the-lamp ceremony, ii) allusions to spiritual pursuits, iii) questions that were based on spirituality, and iv) gestures of religious behaviour by common folk on the streets of India.

Dr John, for example, was surprised to see the taxi driver do a "namaste" while crossing a temple. He mused that in America, it may just not be possible to observe a taxi driver do such a thing. Frankly, this was a strong observation, and I found it reminiscent of what my parents alway told me while I was growing up.

I am thankful to these gentlemen (and to Rakeshji who got Brian and Roger to visit us) for their kind compliments on India and its cultural practices.

Roger and Brian were also happy about the emphasis on value based education that we follow in PT universe. They said this was a marked diversion from the run-of-the-mill material approach of many, and that they found it refreshing.

All this makes you think about a lot of things!

What direction is the world taking? Pure materialism with all its limitations apparently is deeply flawed. It leaves in its wake an emptiness that is immeasurable. Maybe a lot of Indians abroad come back finally to fill that gap in their lives. Or am I just being supercilious and unnecessarily patronising? How is it possible for a young student about to become an MBA to strike the right balance between materialism and spirituality? What is happiness? Lasting happiness?

I also started thinking about the disucssion on "reality" that formed the basis of the movie trilogy "Matrix". However, that's for later!

Good questions to ponder!
~

Intellectual pursuits for the young

Everytime I conduct a teaching session on "The Economist" magazine, I realise the following
1) it is one of the best examples of well-researched weekly journalism
2) it is one of the best tools to improve your command over the English language
3) it takes you round the world in one shot, every week
4) everything of use for a leader-manager of global importance can be found here, &

5) a sincere reader, over a few years, can almost develop a mastery of key global issues

( I extensively use technology while conducting this session. Electronic PC Whiteboard, Giant screen, audio-video multimedia, videoconferencing with remote campuses, live streaming within campus, etc. It's quite a strong IT stuff. )

Let's talk about the last week's issue, on which I took a session this Friday. We covered the following issues in the course of 4 hours

Teach me, will you?

* The problems in Afghanistan  * The changing nature of Obama's priorities * The Iran situation * Desperation of Hugo Chavez, and importance of 'institutions' in democracies * The World economy - a sullen U shaped recovery predicted * US Healthcare system and its royal mess * Changing nature of brand marketing due to recession * Reckitt Benckisor and the lessons in lean management * Somalian pirates and private security * lessons in global geography * colonial past of Africa * Amar Chitra Katha - 2 small stories (to highlight lessons in morality) * credit crisis summarised in a great YouTube video ... etc.

Imagine! In just a 4 hours, we get a fantastic chance to breeze through all these, and more, and stop at the really serious issues to take a deeper look. At a personal level, I need to work very hard to prepare for each such session but it is rewarding. I learn so much. Each session throws up interesting surprises - like the question yesterday from a student that 'why do so many African countries have almost straight line borders?'

I remember the summers of 1990 when I had the first brush with this publication, on the streets of Daryaganj where I would buy the old issues of The Economist by weight. My friends at IIT found that a crazy thing to do (reading this publication) but somehow I found it interesting! And ever since, I have been unable to put it down.

Larry Ellison (Oracle) famously said "Earlier I used to think, now I just read The Economist". I second that. Oops, doesn't mean I have stopped thinking :)

The Economist is a revered, old, solid British publication. Is it truly secular and even-headed? I now take help of my almost 20 year-long association with this publication as a dedicated reader, issue after issue. And I don't speak lightly on this. 

Well it 'seems' that this publication is even-headed. But its flagrant (now getting subtler) anti-India intellectualism can get on one's nerves especially since you know that we are not that bad as a nation. Maybe I understand - there is definitely a small probability of the post-colonial hatred that these editors may be harbouring against India(ns), especially since Churchill's prediction of India breaking up into hundreds of pieces did not quite come true. Maybe the continuously collapsing credibility of the South Asian neighbours of India will ultimately convince the editors that India is the only place you may trust as a potential world superpower in this region. 

The idea of teaching The Economist as part of course curriculum was the brainchild of the top team including our CEO Varun Gupta, and Director Dr Manas Fuloria.
~

World class!

It is not often that one comes across truly world class work. I was happy to discover a world class graphic artist (animator) whose work on the Credit Crisis is simply outstanding. Thanks to the student who forwarded this link to me. I strongly recommend you watch this YouTube video, and its second part as well, for two reasons : 1) see what world class work truly looks like (simple, elegant, enjoyable, professional), and 2) revise your basics on this Credit Crisis

Here it is. Enjoy! Credit Crisis Explained - Video
~

IT for SMEs = approximate

IT for SMEs* = approximate

For a science that is built on the perfection, neatness and microscopically accurate functioning of every bit that runs around inside the guts of the silicon nanotransistors, this is quite a statement to make. But I speak from the experience of the user. And not some hands-off user, but someone who put his heart (and lots and lots of precious funds) into getting things speeded up and made more modern by IT deployment.

Hi there, small guy!

Since 10th July 1993, when I began my enterprise in that small family garage, I knew that IT will play a big role in my enterprise. I had seen lots of IT stuff back at IIT Delhi, and though those were relatively primeval days (compared to today), I could foresee the potential of what IT could do, if deployed correctly.

So I set out to spend my precious funds, whenever possible, on procuring and deploying IT on various aspects of my enterprise. Given the size of the enterprise, it was a bold move. It still is.

Today, after 16 years of painstaking but joyful learning, here are my learnings, summarised. (It took me quite a few crores to learn these lessons, and I am glad to share these with you, for free)

1. If you are the CEO of an SME, learn to tame your IT excitment impulses.
2. Learn to say "NO" to your colleagues excited over an IT deployment opportunity you know for sure will not create any business advantage.
3. IT vendors can and will rob you of precious funds, giving no tangible business results in return, unless you make them understand otherwise right from the first meeting.
4. What sounds like a killer-ERP for an ICICI Bank, is for them. Not for you. You are small. 
5. Good IT is costly. Actually, very costly.
6. Good IT vendors** are very rare. Maybe, say, 1 in 20.
7. Don't easily trust new, very small IT vendors. They have this bad habit of vanishing suddenly from the face of the Earth, after you are midway through a deployment / deal.
8. IT that is complex for users, is bad IT.
9. Your IT department head should be able to explain every issue in 30 seconds maximum (each).
10. Your customers don't care what IT you use. They care what solution they get.
11. Post-deployment, IT companies really don't care what happens to their products (software or hardware), unless you lock them into a mutually rewarding long-term relationship.
12. IT is not the end, it is just a very approximate tool.
13. Every successful IT deployment needs SME's Top Management's total commitment.

I hope this helps those who are into decision making for SMEs' IT issues. It will be great to hear from you on similar experiences you have had.

* SMEs = Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (a term used frequently in India)
** Good IT vendors = vendors who respect the fact that you as an SME need tangible, solid business results from the IT they deploy inside your company, and who personally take care to ensure end-to-end deployment and take ownership of what may go wrong. As for the rest, they are a bunch of brainless traders, masquerading as "IT" vendors

I must say thanks to Dr Manas Fuloria Director Proton Indore for the various invigorating discussions we had on this topic. Thanks also to my old colleague Varun Gupta sir of PT education who is deftly managing the various aspects of customer-technology linkages for Proton Indore.
~

Validation, beautiful validation

This post talks about the way a project starts, and ultimately gets validated during its operations.

For a project leader, it's important to plan the individual projects really well, and seed them with that "one great idea" that truly defines the project through and through. The "one great idea" is the defining moment for the project leader when the project commences, it's that visionary's moment of truth, moment of joy. And the joy multiplies manifold when later in the age of the project, independent externals validate the original belief with which the project had started.

Our team was faced with a question in August 2007. What will be the defining idea for PROTON? I realised - it could be nothing else but "a transformational educational experience for each and every student". It had to be truly "transformational". The tools, the approach, the people, the infrastructure - everything had to be truly different and exceptionally high quality.

The power of this unique vision thing was apparent to me as I studied several large scale projects that various organisations have executed across the world, across sectors. From Dhirubhai's massively ultra-mega style visions, to Mohammad Yunus's starkly grassroots driven approach, the leader's vision has truly defined every aspect of the reality that finally emerged, and still is. It is one of those things in life that you can possibly do only once with the project. It defines its DNA. It puts a structure for the world to identify the project with.

( This is a long, fascinating, against-all-odds kind of story I will post separately later. Readers will enjoy peeping into the working of the fantastic PROTON team while raising the project from scratch and making it work in 12 months flat. We faced daunting challenges till the end - and with all humility we say we did our best against adverse global, national, and local headwinds and competitive sabotage.)

So then, once the basic vision was crafted (and later refined several times), we set to executing it. Being a manufacturing engineer helps here, as operations come to me naturally. The added fact that I have always carried the garage enterpreneur spirit inside me made day-to-day operational involvement in a new project really easy and enjoyable. 

I must acknowledge the defining contributions made by Varun Gupta sir (our CEO) who designed the entire application process and formal documentation, Manas Fuloria sir who brought a terrific global touch to our operations, Chand Narayan sir who was single-handedly responsible for Proton placements and corporate linkages, Devashish sir and team for designing the entire academic content for the project. Each one of them had total freedom to design their part of the project, and they did a wonderful job. Thanks :)

So now, today was a big day. Some really solid validations happened for project PROTON.

As part of our regular expert guest lecture series (conducted once every fortnight), we had a panel of 3 distinguished speakers. The talk was special in the sense that it was completely a panel-discussion only, driven by audience queries. There were no speeches. The speakers were : Mr Roger Harrop, Mr Brian Chernett, and Mr Rakesh Bhargava. All are distinguished CEO trainers, with decades of global training experience.

For our team, the acid test queries (which I too had posed to myself) were

• What will be the quality of questions that Protons (students) will ask the panel?
• Will the questions truly reflect the effort that we have put into their academics, and grooming?
• Will the techonology backbone (V/C) work seamlessly?
• What will be the panel members' natural opinion (reaction) on our students?

We were happy to discover that

• The quality of questions asked was WORLD CLASS (though the articulation still needs improvement)
• Yes! The questions reflected it in ample measure
• Surprisingly, it did! (with a minor echo problem that arises when Indore speaks to Ahmedabad)
• It was "We are very glad to have come here. There are things we need to do together!"

That's *positive validation*.

My advice to project leaders/managers : To truly find out how your project is doing at any stage of its life, seek out simple answers to the most straight, most penetrating questions. The joy of discovering positive feedback is truly emotional.
~

It's dangerous for a teacher to blog!

Famous (last) words!

When a teacher starts to blog

He blogs, blogs, blogs, and blogs                  

Emotions, memories, tribulations put to animation

That's their style, and there's just no asphyxiation

They say it's dangerous to hand over a mike to a teacher

You can only hand it over, and then wait for it to get over

But it never does, as the teacher goes on and on and on

For his emotions, he wants an audience, Spot On!

Those who said this, really never saw a teacher blog

For with infinite storage space, multimedia tools, and a microphone on call

He also speaks & emotes as he blogs

Poor soul! He takes some time to realise

The computer is dead, he (it) doesn't respond

Horrendous though to many sound it may

Even Google (blogger) finds it hard to tame
This spirit of an eloquent teacher
Is like the insatiable flame
That consumed London once upon a time long ago
Passion, thrill and vision come in handsful with gusto
So shall my blog posts be
That's a promise I make to you
Or rather to myself?
That accompanied to the ocean of words & learnings & fun shall you be done
If you have the stamina to digest this free one (my blog, i.e.)
Fiction, Science, Comics, Theology, Physics, and Evolution
Is my avocation
I just love to read
And to put into practice the good that I read
To share with my loved ones
What I feel is the essence of all wisdom
That it grows when you share
And withers otherwise
Is what they said to us through the ages, the old and the wise
I loved it when Einstein talked of the giants' shoulders over which he peeped
And those Newton's meanderings on the beach of the mighty ocean of truth that lay unseeked
Of Richard Feynman's cracking safes where nuclear codes lay dangerously
Oh so beautiful, Darwin's observations that destroyed all religion till date convincingly!
But religion doesn't die, does it? It bounces back
Just like a teacher! Oh just like a teacher!
So the journey has begun
Never to end
To continue till the end
For life is all about the great unbounded joy of giving, sharing, loving, and growing
Those who miss this, their education is a waste
How many I see regularly being laid to, this, this waste
Enjoy my readers and feed me with your ideas

Together, I am sure, we grow!

~
(My heartfelt thanks to Prof Varun Gupta, CEO, PROTON and Dr Manas Fuloria, Director - who motivated me to start blogging!)