Inspiring

Part 2  Part 3

I, me, myself

I get bored of small talk. I forget names the moment they are mentioned. I'd rather spend time alone than with idiots talking gossip.

More than people, I am interested in ideas. i.e., I like to talk about ideas of common interest than about people. 

And apparently, I am part of "a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population." according to this article.

:-)

Leadership by actually leading

Contrary to the organizational heirarchy based leadership, where employees are 'led' by a boss assigned to them, I think knowledge based industries require a different structure.

The org based leadership works well for management of low skilled staff where they can taught to respect heirarchy but in a knowledge industry, leadership should be rather 'assumed' by being the best of the lot in terms of technical knowledge or skill.

In a knowledge industry, what matters is whether you are able to solve a technical problem or not. The engineer has to find a solution using his own creativity. Having the best management laid processes does not help in getting the best solution.

Therefore, the person who constantly delivers the best solutions will be the natural leader irrespective of designation. 

I think having that framework, is the one of the best things about my own project.

Fail early and fail fast!

"Think why your program will fail. That is more important than why it will work." said my first manager after reviewing my first program at work. 

That turned out to be a great piece of advice because cost of fixing things once they are done is high. Makes one a cynic though.

Failing early or detecting problems early, gives you the ability to change course quickly. Identifying the iceberg a little bit earlier would have saved the Titanic.

If the recession had started earlier, it would'nt have looked so bad.

In my college, the architectural and civil department concieved and built a basketball court. After the construction, it turned out the nets were not aligned. Sigh.

At work, sometimes you are faced with the dilemma when you help others who are not really good at what they do. You are in a way helping the short term goals of the project but long term, these buggers might become leads and won't be able to handle higher responsibilities at that position.  The cost of failure at that point would then eclipse the short term gains of helping them.

Is it better to nip them in the bud? I would think so.

I remember reading  a Jack Welch  book where he says firing bad people early on in their careers gives them an oppurtunity to find work that suits them. Nice way to massage your conscience but I don't think it applies to most of us for whom work is mostly a means to a living.

It is not as good as it looks!

When you say you are travelling to US, a lot of people are awed. What a great lifestyle people have there? 

But I think my lifestyle in India is much better. Cab to office. Cook for food. Housekeeper. More than anything else, 'outsourcing' such work allows you more time on what you really want to do.

On the other hand, in the US, the travel,  food and housekeeping suddenly become problems.

"Unless you are a millionaire, nobody hires housekeepers." 

Some brides simply see India as more livable these days. As salaries have gone up there, Indian married couples are able to afford houses, and young women with jobs have money of their own. In contrast, in the U.S., "people have to even clean their own toilets," says Hasit Dave, 55, who runs the Klassic Match Marriage Bureau in Ahmedabad, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat. - Wall Street Journal

But what irritates me most are Indians who make a decent amount there, living like beggars, surviving on free office popcorn to save money. Some of them wait in the long queue on discount sales on Thanksgiving day braving the freezing cold and for what? To resell the items the next day at a higher price on EBay.

Ideas are cheap - 2

Three great ideas:

"We will create a website to bring your DVD rental shop online. Customers will be able to place orders online and your boys can deliver them to their addresses" -- IIM guy to a DVD rental store owner.

"Guys, I just got married recently and barely able to make ends meet. I don't have time or money to test your idea. By the way, if you can return the DVD's you took last week, it will be great!"

On an NDTV program about IIM guys opting for 'entrepreneurship':

"Our idea is to make a website for movie reviews. Users will be able to submit movie reviews and vote. Ads will generate revenue."

Dude: Have you heard of IMDB? 

Three MBA's from Great Lakes Management Institute decided to start their own company. Idea? Putting movie theaters on the web. Movie goers can buy tickets on the web. They pay 10k to a local programmer who builds a lousy website and now after an year they are doing  case study.

An MBA is probably a great study course. I would myself like to study how to read balance sheets and understand finance.

But my gripe is against the arrogant mediocre's who believe that a college certificate gives them Midas's touch.

Ideas are cheap

Readers of this blog might have sensed my animosity towards 'management' types. I particulary have contempt for  the kind of people who do nothing but consult on 'ideas'. 

Want to validate your company strategy? Hire a 'con'sulting company to do analysis.

And where do these consultants get their data from? 

Market research? Google? 

Market research often means interviewing a sample size of 500 people to decide what a billion wants.  Yeah, like we are an egalitarian society. 

Also, most people do not know what they want. 

As Henry Ford once said  - "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'".

The beautiful ipod for e.g. could never have been designed based on market research.

MBA types have a notion that their ideas are game changing. That their business plan is what matters. Ofcourse, that is what they are paid to do.

But the reality is that ideas have to evolve into great solutions. Numerous examples elucidate that while ideas are a good starting point it is how it evolves that is more important.

Then the problem with 'smart' people:

“Society is obsessed with the idea of talent and genius and people who are ‘naturals’ with innate ability,” says Ms. Dweck, who is known for research that crosses the boundaries of personal, social and developmental psychology.

“People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.” - from NYTimes article:If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow

Is it any wonder that these consultants are overpaid? That their stamp of approval costs so much? There is somehow this notion that having an approval from an IIM grad is all that matters. Its probably better to seek an astrologer's opinion.

Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others. " A father to his Investment Banker son in this excellent movie Wall Street.

Vision vs. Mission

"42.5" wrote the Business Unit 'head' of the company on the board. 

"Any idea what that number is?" he asked

"Billing rate per employee" 

"No"

"Growth rate of our company"

"I only wish!"

"Average age of the employees" - yes, our company is full of oldies

"Nope"

"Your age"  -- He looked older than that!

"Ha!"

"Salary hike"

"Ok. Stop It!"

"42.5 is the price of the share of our company in USD" he said after the guesses were starting to sound insulting. 

"Our CEO wants that number to be 100".

Yeah right. Like I really care if some hedge fund manager makes money by betting on some stock or a CEO gets his annual bonus by reaching that figure.

A reasonable stock price is important for sustainability but what the suit doesn't understand is that it is not relevant for employees who do not even have stock options!

I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately—they make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental... You can look around [in the general business world and] see people who are  interested in money and nothing else, but the underlying drives come largely from a desire to do something else: to make a product, to give a service—generally to do something which is of value. - David Packard (via Built To Last)

Now, that's something worthwhile to pursue!