Strong Home Team - The Mantra for Guaranteed Success

I have never been so happy in my life.

 

I've been able to achieve great success in recent years. I know success means different things to people. For me, success is to lead a “happy – no worries” life, personally and professionally.

 

I credit this success to having a “strong home team”. A loving and caring spouse, happy and satisfied parents/kids, healthy working environment – I believe these are critical factors for success, for anyone. I seriously think this environment forms a great platform to achieve success. For me, this was 98%. And the rest was my individual effort.

 

Almost all my life, I have been with my parents. They moved with me where ever I went for my job. While time-consuming household work was affectionately taken care by my father, my mother fed me with all possible, traditional Andhra delicacies. I never missed home food for most part of my life.

 

Even the work environment was morale boosting. Most of the teams I worked with were filled with positive people. When I said this last time, someone said, “Impossible!! Do you mean to say in your nine years of professional career, you never got negative/discouraging people on your teams?”.

 

I didn't say this. Of course, there were always such instances. Just the difference is that the association did not last long! Either such people were shunted out of teams, or simply I made the move. Very early in my life, I somehow realized that I could never relate to such teams as my productivity was seriously effected. Hence the moves were mandatory.

All the time along, I was expecting EXACT SAME results from life. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that I believe in “Speak What You Want!” principle. I was speaking what I wanted, demanding positive expectations from life.

 

I got married. Ours was an arranged one. Some were surprised to know that Indu and I did not even see each other before we were engaged. We spoke to each other on phone (as I was in UK, and she was in India). In less than an hour, we made the decision. You know if that's the ONE (meant for you), in a heart's beat. Our decision is hardly surprising for people who are aware of this nature's law. Quite coincidentally, both of us believed in it.

 

Today when we look back, we THANK GOD every minute for the decision we have made. We both believed in “Marriage is not about FINDING the right one, it's about BEING the right one”. It was refreshingly surprising for both of us to realize that we had 80% of our expectations met. The rest 20% is about Being the right one, and that's easy.

 

Today I represent one of the fastest growing Irish IT companies in the world. Our R&D center in India is bound to grow by leaps and bounds. I am among the first few to be brought in, to help them to achieve these results. This meant lot of ground work from hiring to delivery. Obviously lots of “stress” and “pressure”!

 

We just started tasting fruits our initial success. I can clearly see the invisible link between the success that I am achieving at work and a strong home team.

 

Indu is a born entrepreneur. She has some of the finest ideas of getting into business. Even in her wildest dreams, she never though of getting a “JOB”. She never liked the idea of working for someone. She is a straightforward “S” quadrant (if you read Robert Kiyosaki – the Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame, you know what I mean). She has these dreams and goals in life. And the best thing is she is clear about them.

 

Once I am home, I help her in realizing our dreams (just to explain, I made her dreams mine, she made mine, hers. Now there are no “Your” dreams or “My” dreams. Only “Our” dreams!!). The mazaa in working together as a team with your spouse – appreciating each other – to achieve a common goal in life! Wah, you have to live it realize the pleasures of it!!

 

Thus Indu and I, from “S” and “E” quadrants respectively, working together to move into our dream quadrant -- “I”. We realize the pleasure of success is NOT in achieving the end goal, but it IS in the journey. That's the reason we both believe:

 

Strong home team is The Mantra for guaranteed success.

 

Salam Namaste, Recruitment Teams

I salute your patience and celebrate your spirit of success.

 

My “Hiring Manager” avatar for the last few months made me realize how increasingly difficult it has become to hire good people (oops! I should have said “right” people).  By “Good”, I mean people who match the profile of the position we are trying to fill.  I truly believe everyone is just as good as anyone else.  I think everyone is good for “some” job.  It’s just that the profiles should match.  And that’s THE key.  Finding that right match.

 

It all starts with volatile requirements (you techies over there, this sounds familiar? yeah, it is!).  Is it 10 developers or 12?  What is the mix of college-grads/juniors/seniors?  What are team sizes and their mix? etc.  Once we have a ball-park number, the exercise of “selling” the organization shuroo.  Then you start exploring various means of “finding” these “right ones”.  Media ads, consultants, referrals, word of mouth blah blah blah.

 

If you release ads in news paper, you can be sure that hundreds, if not thousands of resumes start hitting your email.  Be warned to have a bigger mail box.  Once you start receiving these mails, filtering them is another tedious process.  Accommodating curricula received from various sources, and keeping track of them is not as easy as it sounds.

 

Telescreening, logical tests, aptitude tests, code tests!  Personal interviews, office interviews, HR interviews and technical interviews!! First round, second round, third round and even seventh round in some organizations!!!  You have many challenges to find this “right one”.  And when you find one, probably you are justified if you feel you accomplished great achievement of success.  In all probability, you end up negotiating the right deal with your “prospective” employee.  Your colleagues realize your accomplishment as you yell “HURRAHHH!!” while rushing through the exit door.

 

All your “hurrah!!”s turn into “oh! NO”s when you start receiving calls from the “chosen ones” – explaining various reasons why they can’t come on board!!  Someones’ pay just got better, someone else just got a promotion.  Someones’ relocating to a whole new universe, while someone else just realized that they should be “more loyal” to the current organization.  For somebody, their boss wouldn’t let them go, and someone else, its their dog!

 

And finally (sadly) we are back to square one.

 

I pity peoples’ lack of decision making skills (or should I pity myself – they just made a decision NOT to make a move!  But then I wonder why they DID go through all this pain).  Two things that come to my mind in this situation:

 

1. I thank GOD for not letting me work with these guys who are not great decision makers anyway!
2. I build my pipeline stronger so that I can have backups!!

 

I know I sound harsh when I say these things.  But that’s reality.  That’s how I feel.  And I guess most of the professionals in the field of recruitment also feel the same way.

 

I did it just once – on a large scale, full time.  I can’t imagine myself doing this all over again for the rest of my life. 

 

This job needs patience.  This job needs Godly patience.

 

That’s why, Salam Namaste, Recruitment Teams.

Spirit of Pairing

I am currently re-reading Stephen Covey’s classic “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”.  Each time I read it, I catch a new meaning for certain things.  This time, it is about pairing.  On page 263, explaining “Synergize”, Covey wrote:

 

“Synergy is everywhere in nature.  If you plant two plants close together, the roots commingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated.  If you put two pieces of wood together, they will hold much more than the total of the weight help by each separately.  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  One plus one equals three or more.  The challenge is to apply the principles of creative cooperation, which we learn from nature, in our social interactions”

 

I am quite amazed to note how aptly it applies to the spirit of pairing in agile methods.

 

 

 

Improvements to Next ASCI Conferences

Another late post.  But we all heard it, better late than never, right? :p (I wanted to scare you all with a lllllonnnnggg post!!)

 

Couple of things I scribbled down during the presentations at the recent Mumbai conference.  I am posting them for the group’s discussion.

 

1. Mike / sound systems:  We should have professional mike system.  It was too informal, and some speakers were not audible enough for the entire audience.  I think we must consider services of some professionals next time.
2. Podcast:  It is linked to the above.  If we have an audio system in place, we could record these sessions and post them online.
3. Video:  Can we think of capturing these presentations on video for further reference/use?  May be reused at local ASCI UG meets (for the benefit of people who could not attend)?
4. Banners:  It was chaos this time with banners.  I suggest we have one single banner with all participant logos.  What do you think?
5. Publicity:  Should we try inexpensive methods of publicizing the event (“What’s Up today?” section of news papers, channels, FM etc)?
6. Notepads:  The notepads we gave in the kit are rarely used.  Is it because of the quality?  Or we don’t need them?  Are we including them in the kit “just for the sake of doing it – as a ritual”?
7. Timers:  Almost all speakers over run their time limits.  Some even ate into next sessions’ time.  I saw those next session speakers waiting patiently for these guys to complete!  I think we need time-keepers.
8. Speaker Introduction:  We should have the brief introduction of the speaker at the beginning of the session.  And when it ends, we should thank the speaker, and say some nice words (can be done when we give them mementos)!
9. Better Auditoriums:  We definitely need better auditoriums
10. Book Counters:  Many were asking where they can buy agile-related books.  Can we talk to publishers and arrange book counters?  I am sure there will be lots of sales.
11. Key note timing:  I don’t think the experiment of change in time of key note session really worked out.  I rather prefer it to be at the beginning of the day.
12. Theme:  How about coming up with a theme for the conference?  And keep all presentations in line with the theme?
13. Markers etc:  We must definitely make sure that the markers/dusters/white boards are usable and visible.
14. Learn from other UG meets:  Globally there are many agile conferences happening.  How doe we learn from their experiences and customize it to our situation?
15. What are other suggestions from the users in this group on running such conferences more effectively?

 

 

Word of caution

Are words powerful? Are they powerful enough to kill people? If you are not sure, you have not read today's headlines. Words of rumor killed almost 1000 people in stampede in Iraq. Such a sad incident!

Same thing happened couple of years ago. Some preacher convinced people that he can lead them to heaven and people believed him to that extend that they all took poison and died. Even few months back when heavy rains struck Mumbai, rumors of Tsunami killed few dozens.

If words are so powerful, can we use them for obtaining positive results? Can we use them to build lives? Can we change lives with words?

I firmly believe in the power of “Spoken Word’. There something very interesting that I heard couple of years ago from my hero, Kumar Sivaramkrishnan – a millionaire, who became so by mastering the art of spoken word. He once talked about the powerful way of programming brain with spoken words. I was amazed at the power of this, and ever since became fan of this ideology :-)

Let me try to explain.

Our belief system lies in our brain. When we are born, the brain is clean, without any beliefs (clean slate!). As we grow older, we develop our belief systems (through our senses?). Let's say we have a belief that we are poor at public speaking. We believe we are not good at talking to gatherings. We were not born with this belief, did we? So, our clean mind picked it up along the way we grew up. Probably some bad experiences collaborated to form this belief.

Now, we want to change that. How do we do it? Let’s imagine this situation. We somehow get ourselves in front of audience – to speak. Then subconsciously we ask our brain, what our experience is likely going to be. What does the brain do? As David Schwartz talks about it in his “Magic of Thinking Big”, brain is like a “bank-teller”. When asked for information, it looks in to our “past” account, and digs past experiences. And what do you have in your past? Bad experiences related to speaking in public. Probably some insult, and humiliation too. So, the brain comes back and reminds you how you failed when you tried to participate in elocution competition in your college, when you tried giving a presentation to your colleagues, or when you tried to address a customer gathering blah blah blah.

Guess what’s going to happen now! Exactly. You are going to fail again.

Let’s consider this variation in the earlier situation. Instead of asking the “teller” (brain) what your “account balance” (past experiences) is, you “deposit” your “words” that form your “account balance”: you strongly convey the message that you are going to do great this time. How do you do that? By speaking. If possible, speaking aloud. You say, “This is going to be a great talk. I am going to enjoy it. All the audience is going to like my talk. I am a master at public speaking”.

Let’s see what happens when you say these things aloud (to yourself).

When you say it aloud, who is going to hear it first? Yourself. So, your ears take the message to your brain. What does brain do? It tries to deposit the message. And there will be a conflict, for sure. Because, it does not LOGICALLY match with your previous experiences, your subconscious probably refuges to register it.

Then what do you do? You say it again and again and again until the mind is forced to take it. You will face some initial hiccups, but with practice, you will overcome the fear of public speaking. What did you do? You are essentially “programming” your brain with your words!! (I can draw a parallel between this, and the ancient Hindu philosophy of “Tathastu Devata” – the Gods who supposedly grant your wishes instantly! We were never allowed to say bad words/wishes while we were kids. We were told all those wishes are instantly granted by Tathastu Devata, so better speak and ask for good ones!!)

If you expand, I can see that the same applies to so many other things in life – achieving your dreams and goals, having positive changes in the way you live, and improving the quality of life altogether etcetera. I heard many, many, many real life examples of the power of spoken word. To conclude, I believe in the following. This is no jumbling of words; this is something I personally learnt from one of my billionaire associates.

“Speak what you want. Don't speak what you already have that you don't want. Speak what you want, even if you don't have it, as if you already have it”

I practice it very religiously. You try!