Fear of Unknown Vs Pain of Stagnation

How to execute Business Transformation Strategy? 

Perhaps, everyone agrees that the only constant thing in life is "change".  Majority of us may also agree that "change" is the single most uncomfortable, if not irritant factor in our life.  Why?  Why should change be so hard?  What makes change such a difficult thing to accept?  Is there any way we can improve the situation, if not altogether avoid it?

By nature, humans are tuned to consistency.  The human brain usually looks for patterns and means to do things in consistent ways.  That is how we all develop habits, by doing the same things repetitively.  To break away from these long acquired habits and build new patterns is a challenge.  The reason is simple.  The "fear of unknown"!  And this is not new news.  When the fear of unknown dominates, people develop tolerance for the pain of stagnation. 

But this is when an interesting thing happens - humans are inquisitive in nature and usually want to explore new avenues of growth.  When the pain of stagnation dominates, they slowly, at times unwillingly start accepting change.  In the case of a business transformation, change is even more challenging because it demands changes in the behaviors of its most important assets - its people. 

This article discusses some ideas specific to the execution methods of business transformation.

Steps leading to transformation

Customers always want better, cheaper solutions.  Agile markets usually respond.  There is a need to increase (or at times sustain) the market share through improved customer satisfaction.  Cutting costs becomes inevitable and business transformation suddenly becomes the need-of the-hour.  In many cases, it’s a life-or-death situation, an emergency rather than an elective surgery.  The organization brainstorms and comes up with a clear vision and strategy.  What's left is execution!  Boy, that's hard!!

Some strategy execution techniques

1.       Communication, Communication and Communication

It is not possible to emphasize enough the role communication plays in any transformation.  Business leaders should use all tools and techniques of this digital age to do this job; nevertheless, they should not forget the “human touch” aspect.  A wise man once said, “People don’t change before a minute they are ready”!  The effort here is to make them ready by clearly communicating the need-of-the-hour.

2.       Master Alliance at all leadership levels

The Grand Master Alliance, which comprises of all stakeholders and executive sponsors should take full ownership of the execution.  Guiding change is the ultimate test of leadership.  Being the prophets who can help the business to reinvent itself, the executive leadership should form a strong alliance across functions.  In turn, leaders at all levels should form similar alliances in their own sphere of influence to percolate changes to the grass root level.   Ultimately, it is the leadership who drives the execution with their sense of commitment.

3.       The Festive Mood with a sense of urgency

The whole act of business transformation should be considered as if people are celebrating a festival.  The mood should be happy.  The sense of urgency is there because there are a lot of things to do before the festival ends.  People should be incentivized for their efforts.  Teams should celebrate every tiny success.  People should be excited about their role in reinventing the business.

4.       Personalized Coaching - one size doesn't fit all

Personal attention usually takes back seat in these situations.  Not everyone perceives the transformation in the same way or understands it as it should be.  People will have questions and will be hesitant to ask them in public forums, thus developing the “fear of unknown”, which is likely to spread across pretty fast.  Leaders should take time to coach their people, answer their questions, alleviate their fears and stand by their side.  The sense of “we are all in this together” should prevail and the “One Team” should be the mantra.

5.       Feedback loop - Open environment - continuous improvement

Execute, seek feedback, make changes, then again execute should be the loop to propel continuous improvement.  Sometimes feedback may not be liked by the leadership.  But since people are involved in the process from the core level, their opinions must be heard with an open mind and the concerns must be addressed in a transparent way.  This improves the trust which in turn results in personal responsibility. 

Following the above techniques, the leadership should strive to create an environment where people “own” the execution of the business transformation.  Once that is done, the rest is history!

Business transformation is never easy.  But yeah, it’s worth the effort.

5 keys to Effective Crisis Management

It’s rare to find projects in software development which do not enter a crisis mode at least once in their lifetime.  So, if you are finding yourself amidst the thickest of a project-crisis, don’t worry, it’s not odd.  The good news is that there are ways to effectively manage this.

Key 1:  Be aware and be bold to accept

There are several signs way before any project runs into deep-crisis.  It’s not odd to see people either not being aware or even be in denial mode when these signs show up.  Remember, the first step in solving any problem is to realize and accept that one exists!  The issues in small pockets that you had observed might not seem to trigger a crisis.  It is possible that the other leaders are in the same boat.  And all these issues put together might result in deep trouble.  Be aware of the challenges and proactively understand from all parts of the project to find patterns of the brewing trouble.

Key 2:  Leaders take on the pressure, Managers pass it on!

Be a leader and take the pressure head-on.  It is possible that you are privy to information that the teams aren't, and as a result, perhaps you are under extreme stress and pressure.  Exposing your teams to the same is only going to yield adverse results and this is why.

You are aware that productivity is directly proportional to the pressure (work or otherwise).  Yes, agreed that the pressure to an extent improves productivity positively, but beyond a certain point, it impacts adversely.  Experience and the maturity that comes along makes the leaders take on extreme pressure.   But the same can’t be expected from the team members.  So, it is the leader’s responsibility to gauge the “right-amount-of-pressure” that the team can take-on to be productive.  Don’t throw your teams from pan to fire!!

Key 3:  Opportunity in adversity

A wise man once said, “in every adversity lies the seed of equal or greater opportunity”.  And history presents countless anecdotes on how true this is.  Perhaps, everyone has a story to share here from their own experience.  The hope and optimism is the key.

Not just the leaders but majority of the contributors should believe that “this can be done”.  All communication should stress the need and the possibility of “how” this can be done.  In any crisis, it’s very common that negativity spreads faster than the optimism.  You know, weeds are automatic, but flowers are not!!  It takes some time and energy to take out the weeds in order to grow a healthy garden.  Again the role that leaders play here is of paramount importance.

Key 4:  Method to the madness

It is very common to see chaos in every crisis.  And that’s stage one.  The project is in crisis and everyone is trying, of course with the right intentions, to pitch in and help.  People are pulled into different discussions, meetings, directions, and so on.  The fastest way to recover from a crisis is to bring some method to the madness by applying some proven techniques.  Although it is human tendency to be emotional about crisis, it’s been proved time and again that we respond very well to a logical recovery plan.  Again, they key here is to get the buy-in from all the people involved on the way forward and march-fast to reach the goal.

Key 5:  Every bucket counts

You might have heard the story of this king who ordered people to contribute one bucket of milk to mark his birthday celebrations, hoping to collect containers of quality milk.  The story goes like this.  Everyone thought since it’s going to be a large, covered container, it’s okay if they slip in a bucket of water instead of milk without anyone noticing it!  And predictably, the king was very unhappy to see large containers of water instead of milk.  Morale of the story is that every bucket counts!!  As leaders, it is your responsibility to ensure everyone in your team understands this.

Ultimately, it boils down to the leaders!  They make it or break it!!  Whether command-control style is more effective or the facilitative style, is really arguable.  While leaders are comfortable with one or the other styles, it’s not rare that the situation demands the right mix.  And what matters most are the results.

 All the best.

Leadership in Self Organizing Teams (SOTs)

Probably nothing has been more misinterpreted than the term “self-organizing teams” in the agile world of software development. For some, SOTs are “leader-less-teams”. They are seen as teams with highly motivated individuals, collaborating with each other to deliver tasks. In his recent Cutter article, Jim Highsmith said, “for some, self-organized teams have become, antiorganization!” It is often viewed (by the misinformed crowd) that, because of the operational style of these “super-heroes” of SOTs, there is no necessity for leaders.

Well, I beg to differ.

In my opinion, leaders’ role is more crucial in “self organizing teams” than any other style. Lack of leadership nearly kills teams of any form, self organized or otherwise. Leaders are important for teams for many reasons: translate vision into deliverables, set standards for interactions - inter/intra team communication, unite and lead team members towards achieving common goal etc.

SOTs are highly disciplined teams as contrary to the popular misconceptions. Sanjiv Augustine, in his “Managing Agile Projects”, refers to these teams as “Organic Teams, enabling connections and adaptation through close relationships on small, flexible teams”. Obviously leaderless teams find it very challenging to accomplish these objectives.

I think leaders are naturally chosen by the teams. In all my projects (especially with “agile” flavor), I saw this happen. When you don’t name leaders, teams are naturally going to choose leaders. I think that is the best way for leaders to emerge. But a word of caution: I have also experienced chaos when people were confused and didn’t see big picture. So, you should be extra-cautious in observing the process patterns and ready to adapt to changes.

I also liked Jim Highsmith’s “six-point-formula” on creating empowered teams. May be we will discuss it sometime later.

Huh, heavy stuff? Let me sign-off on a lighter note. This is my favorite on XP :-)
Courtesy - http://beingextreme.blogspot.com/2005/11/light-bulb-jokes.html

How many XP developers does it take to change a light bulb?
What's the test for your use of the room? We cannot possibly estimate the amount of work or the resources required without understanding the "what". Why do you want light in the room? We can simplify the room by deleting the roof, walls and light bulb so that you can get light at least 8 hours a day - of course you should only be doing 40 hours in there anyway. And you'll never need a new light bulb! Which has tangible business value over the life of the system? We estimate it will take 2 developers 4 ideal days provided the roof doesn't cause injury if we refactor the floor first.

Gandhigiri and You!

Latest flick from Bollywood has some great ideas on how "Gandhism" can be applied to current world (our global audience who may not know, Gandhi is our "Father of The Nation" and played key role in Indian independence movement - a quick Google gets you 23 million results on "Gandhi"!).

 

Gandhiji is, unfortunately, is a forgotten hero today.  You may disagree with his actions, but you will agree that he was a great leader.  History tells us how powerful his ideology was in bringing an entire nation together!  That's the fact.  Though many of us (in this generation) almost forgot this gentleman, he was a hero for millions of our fathers' generation.  Gandhiji demonstrated some of the best success principles.  We will see how they can be applied (or at least related) in the context of organizational leadership.

 

Truthfulness and honesty are the core of Gandhiji's values.  He learnt very early in life how valuable these qualities are, and practiced them for the rest of his life.  His leadership-by-example model (practice-what-you-preach) inspired many to develop these qualities.  Let's see how they matter in our context.

 

Honesty and Leadership

Honesty is the best policy.  Isn't it?  I believe honesty is the best way to coexist and build long lasting organizations.  An organization is only as good as it's leaders.  It is the leaders who energize teams with their energy (incidentally, these two qualities - energize and energy - are the first two of Jack Welch's 4E's of leadership).  It becomes much easier for the leadership to motive and energize people when they gain buy-in.  And trust forms the core of this.  People only trust those who are honest.  Obviously, you yourself don’t like bluff-masters, do you?

 

I believe trust forms core of human relationships.  Trusting and being trusted are clearly visible in any healthy relationship.  And lacking them obviously results in conflicts.  Trust is built on the great foundation called "honesty".

 

Honesty is being yourself.  It is about being comfortable without having to wear masks.  It is this core value of people that lets them win others trust.  And honesty is strongly coupled with truth.  They are the Siamese twins of success.  As we observed earlier, without these qualities, people find it very challenging to gain trust.  It is this quality of being upfront builds reputation and wins trust.  Gandhigiri suggests the following simple practice steps:

 

1.      Don’t wear masks.  They are invisible to only ONE person in this world.  And that's unfortunately - you.

2.      Be genuinely interested in people.  Tell them how much you value them.  Tell them how you few being associated with them.

3.      Develop an important quality of leadership - listening.  Understand trust is NOT a one-way route.  Understand what people are genuinely interested in.  And show them how they can achieve them by doing what you want them to do.

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Power of Mentorship

I am so excited in life now.  There are so many things happening simultaneously.  And by GOD’s plan I was fortunate enough to be mentored by a couple – a couple who gave a piece of their life to touch others’ lives.  And things happening for the last couple of weeks prove how powerful mentorship is.

 

I was very confused for quite some time.  If I look back in retrospect, I can understand why I was so confused.  I did not have access to people who could show me how to do things that they have done, so that I could be there where they are.  I know people who are very successful in life, in terms of financial success, in terms of career success etc.  But the problem was – no one was willing to spare their time to help me go where I wanted to go (poor guys, they themselves are caught in the proverbial “rat-race”!).  Probably earlier generations did not face this challenge as most of them are mentored by their parents.  With the changing times and work environments, jobs are created to help people cut the mustard! 

 

And while living in such a competitive, busy world, expecting personal help from people to achieve your dreams, means expecting a lot!  I realized that very early in my career.  So, only way you find your way to reach your goals is by reinventing the wheel.  Of course, along with it comes frustration too, right?  I have been looking for a teacher who can guide me reach my goals.  And I have been speaking this into existence for quite some time.  If you don’t understand power of spoken word – my case is a classic example.

 

The teacher showed up when the student was ready.  He answered all my questions, to my satisfaction.  I love his answers for a simple reason:  he preaches what he practiced.  He never said a thing that he never did.  So, it became easy for me to relate to what he was saying.  Sure, I want to be there where he is today.  And the best thing about my mentor is that he is ready to take time out of his life to help me.  And that backup, is quite something!  It’s an amazing sense of security!!

 

Power of association!  Sure you become who you associate with.  Probably you heard this before.  “Tell me your friends, I will tell who you are!”  Doctors hang-out with doctors, lawyers with lawyers and IT guys with the same crowd.  I did not believe when someone told me this.  Then I looked back – my grandfather was a senior advocate, and all his friends, needless to say, are advocates!  I look at myself and listed down my friends.  There you go again – all IT professionals.  There could be exceptions here and there.  But grossly, if you are successful in a career – you tend to be friends with guys in the same profession – most of the time.

 

What an amazing principle of success!  Power of Association!!  I learnt a great lesson about this principle.  I am learning how to disassociate with people who are negative, sarcastic, tying to pull you down or even those who can’t reciprocate with positive vibes.  Hey buddy, life is too small to be worried.  And people take you down if you are not cautious enough.  So, the first step is to stop negative.

 

The second step is to increase positive.  I was amazed at the examples he quoted – things I used to do regularly – even without realizing how it affects my brain.  I got some wonderful tips on how I could increase positive-supply to my mind.

 

Of course, the third is to pass on the knowledge.  Help others if they are looking for help.  Never say things you never did.  Only such things help people which you yourself practiced and got results.   Blessed are those who can touch others’ lives.

 

Phenomenal stuff, man!

Fun with Recruiting

I have been fortunate enough to get involved in hiring activities for the last couple of years.  It gives me great pleasure in meeting new people, knowing about their aspirations, dreams, and things they like etc.  Of course, there were times when things did not happen as expected and with it came frustration.

 

It took some time for me to realize that this frustration tells me that I need to change, than expecting “circumstances” to change.  Long ago, I read a little story about change.  It goes something like this.

 

Carrot, Egg and Coffee

(from unknown source)

 

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.        

 

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans.  She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.  In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.  

 

Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me what you see." 

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

 

Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots.  She did and noted that they were soft.  The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg.  Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

 

The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?"

 

Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity - boiling water.  Each reacted differently.  The carrot went in strong, hard, and relenting.  However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.  The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.  The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

 

"Which are you?" she asked her daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond?  Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?"

 

Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?  Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart?  Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you.

 

When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean  The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can't go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

 

</end-of-story>

 

So, I started enjoying interviews rather than complaining about them.  I started talking to “people” rather than “candidates”.  I started working on improving my skills to bring the best of an interviewee: by having a positive conversation.  Then it became very easy to see if there is a fit – between the role and the person.  Decision is very easy.

 

Thank You GOD, for teaching me valuable lessons of life by providing great opportunities to learn.

E-ntilligence

I recently read an article about “E-Mail Intelligence”.  It’s very interesting.

 

Briefly, email intelligence is analyzing those zillions of emails that reside in the corporate email systems and present it in a dash board to analysts for further analysis.

 

As email has become THE standard of communication these days, it is not surprising at all that most of the information, if not all, which is critical to business, hides in someone’s mail box.  Legal battles like the anti-monopoly case against Microsoft or other infamous litigations of corporate governance heavily rely on email analysis.  And traditionally most of the legal houses carried their job by dedicating large teams to manually analyze corporate email systems, which proved to be expensive and laborious.

 

This is an emerging market for sure (a Google quickie on “email intelligence” brings up 140,000,000 results!!).  There are already various products in the market place with tools that offer application of advanced statistical, linguistic and proprietary analysis techniques.  This, for sure, is an interesting space to watch.

 

 

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!

Attrition

Looking at IT industry in Bangalore, one would say that the employee attrition rate is crazy.  You see so many people switching jobs every now and then, causing serious concerns for the management.  Large organizations maintain bench (or beach – additional resources than required) to solve part of the problem (of course, not solely to address this problem alone).  But can this additional cost be avoided?  Can we build that trust between employer and employee?  Can we avoid conflicts and arrive at an agreeable resolution with in the industry? 

 

I remember sometime back, when the situation was worse in the BPO industry, organizations signed *treaties* not to poach people from neighbors.  Of course, it was of very little effect as practical implementation of the same was very hard.  Employee turn over is definitely the symptom.  What is the cause?

 

Now, is a lack of employee turnover cause for celebration? 

 

I read an article recently which questioned lack of employee turn over.  And I found interesting answers too.  It is true that when people asked what they like about their jobs, they give politically correct answers – which *you* want to hear.  But some reasons could be:

 

• Business is down and other companies are not hiring.
• Your employees have skills so specific that there are few companies that require them.
• The current pay level has reached a point that other companies would be hard pressed to meet it.
• The compensation is level throughout the industry, making it impossible to switch jobs for more pay.

 

This is very interesting argument.  I think it’s more painful for the employer to have people around – who want desperately to move on, but can’t – for whatever reasons.  While all of us can discuss the reasons, I agree with Tana that it’s not those *reasons* we need to look at, but the *people*.  How can we address this?

The Magic of Making Mistakes

A good article by Robert Kiyosaki, the author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad”.  What I like about his approach is that I am able to draw parallels between his ideas and, not surprisingly, agile development.

 

Just read the article and ask yourself a question:  don’t you do similar things in agile?

 

(from http://www.richdad.com/pages/article_mistakes.asp)  

 

My real dad came from the world of academics, a world where mistakes are perceived as bad and to be avoided. My rich dad came from the streets. To him, mistakes were opportunities to learn something new, something he did not know before.

Street Smart Versus School Smart
My rich dad was very successful financially for many reasons. At the top of the list was his attitude towards making mistakes. Like most of us, he hated making them, yet he was not afraid of making them.

Each time he made a mistake, instead of being depressed, he often seemed happier, wiser, more determined, and often richer from the experience. He would say to his son and me, "Mistakes are how we learn. Every time I make a mistake, I always learn something about myself, I learn something new, and I often meet new people I would never have met."

As I watched my real dad struggle financially and professionally, my rich dad said, "To be successful in the real world of business, you have to be school smart as well as street smart. In school, you're given the lesson first. On the street, you're given the mistake first and then it's up to you to find the lesson. Since most people have not been taught how to make mistakes and learn from them, they either avoid mistakes altogether, which is a bigger mistake, or they make a mistake but fail to find the lesson from the mistake. That is why you see so many people making the same mistake over and over again." Rich Dad said, "I am so rich because I've made more financial mistakes than most people. Each time I made a mistake, I learned something new. In the business world, that something new is often called 'experience.' But experience is not enough. If a person truly learns from a mistake, his or her life changes forever, and what that person gains instead of experience is 'wisdom.'"

The Art of Making a Mistake
Rich Dad taught us the art of making a mistake and gaining wisdom from it. "The first thing that happens after you make a mistake is that you become upset. At this point of upset, you find out who you really are," he said, going on to describe the cast of characters who are brought to center stage when upsets from mistakes occur:
1. The Liar. "I didn't do that."
2. The Blamer. "It's your fault, not mine."
3. The Justifier. "Well, I don't have a good education so that is why I don't get ahead."
4. The Quitter. "I told you that it would never work."
5. The Denier. "No, there is nothing wrong. Things are fine."

Rich Dad said, "If you want to learn and gain wisdom from this priceless mistake, you have to let 'The Responsible You' eventually take control of your thinking."

Mental Attitude Quiz
1. What are your attitudes to risk, making mistakes, and learning?
2. What are the attitudes of the people around you to risk, making mistakes, and learning?
3. Are there still some financial, professional, or business upsets that remain unresolved?
4. Are you still angry with some one else in regards to money?
5. And if you are upset with someone else or yourself, what lesson can you learn and be grateful for being courageous enough to have taken a risk and maybe learned something?

Agile Mumbai Rocks

*Cool*

 

That’s the four letter word  I use to describe Mumbai Conference. 

 

The conference attracted interested minds in the Mumbai region to look at this *new* thing called as agile.  Though the turn out was not as expected, I still think it’s a great beginning.  We started creating awareness in users.

 

Great things happened over last few days.  Certainly I would post all the details in multiple posts.  This post, I dedicate to the great team work that made this conference such a hit.

 

I reached Mumbai on Friday, one day before the conference starts, just to offer my hand in arrangements.  As I witnessed, the success of the conference can be attributed to few people: Naresh Jain, Dhaval Dalal and the SP College enthusiastic students.  There may be many others who are involved, but I saw these guys live on the floor.  In spite of their busy schedules, and other commitments, these guys dedicated almost a whole week to this event, mostly working 12-14 hours a day.  I appreciate these boys from the bottom of my heart.

 

User conferences like this can *only* be successful if they are run by committed souls like these.  If you need a yard stick to measure the success of the event, talk to people who came from Chandigarh and New Delhi.  They are so fired up that we are asked to conduct similar events in their cities too.

 

I would also like to appreciate numerous other users and organizations, who contributed in various ways to see this conference as a successful event.  Great job guys, Keep it Up!!

 

Agile is here to stay.

 

(read more about it on my blog: http://nandury.blogspot.com/)

Enough space to bury myself :-)

What do you do with 1 terabyte storage on your hard disk?

 

Dump all the movies in the world?!!

 

Hitachi came up with world’s first Terabyte DVD recorder which can hold up to 128 hours of high definition television recording.  I started thinking of possible things we can do with that space (in the home user segment)…

 

• Record entire series of saus-bahu soaps
• Put ALL mp3s ever available in the world
• Pictures (can you make it up in you life?)
• Start home-video production and dump all those videos
• Movie editing and stuff (Movie DJ?)
• Anything else!!!

 

Hiring Blues

I am currently in the last phase of hectic hiring activity.  It is so sad to see so many young people, with absolutely no idea of what they want to do in future.  Not just that, even their attitude troubles me a lot.  I have seen very few people who check credentials of the company before they come to meet us.  98% come into the interview room without any idea what we do.  All they need is a JOB.  It does not matter whoever gives it to them.  "Gimme My Job!!" attitude.  I feel sorry for these guys.  They are coming here to earn a good fortune of their life time, at least for the next few years, and they don't care. 

Usually that's my first question, and people answer -- "Sorry, I didn't have time.  I was too busy with my project". 

Dude! you did not come here to hang out with your friends.  You have come here to make an important move in your career.  Don't you think you should be a bit more careful, do some homework before you show up?

Shortcomings in GDS Outlook Plug-in

After a couple of searches using the Google outlook plug-in, I realized its not that great.  Sure, it brings to you ALL the information in the mails (related to your search), but it has the following shortcomings:

1.  It has no clue if the content is deleted or moved to other places.  It displays the content, though.

2.  It does not allow to give search criteria, its just a vanilla search

3.  And the interface is not great too.

blah blah blah …

Hope it improves in future

 

Cool GDS v2

Just installed Google Desktop v2.0. (http://desktop.google.com/index.html)

 

I think it’s cool.  I liked the Side Bar idea.  Of course, there have been many applications till now that served as side bars with various applications embedded in.  But I liked this one because it has active content in it.  It has an RSS feed reader, a quick TODO pad, a scratch pad etc.  Of course, I can’t use the weather bar, as it still does not show me Bangalore weather.  Or the news bars, as the news is mostly related to the western world.

 

The best thing I liked about it is the Outlook search bar plug-in.  All these days, I have just been using GDS to search my mails.  I realized Outlook built in search is such a time wasting effort.  I found it most of the times to act dumb, and miss the content I am looking for.  It never happened with the GDS.  It picked up exactly what I was looking for, and that too at a lightening speed.  That’s the primary purpose I use GDS for.  And I felt so happy to see the latest version to come up with a special plug-in for outlook.  I hope the experience gets better.

Staganography

I came across a new word today – Steganography. I wondered what it means, and started looking for more information. And this is what I learnt.

“”Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the intended recipient knows of the existence of the message; this is in contrast to cryptography, where the existence of the message itself is not disguised, but the meaning is obscured. The name comes from Johannes Trithemius's Steganographia: a treatise on cryptography and steganography disguised as a book on black magic, and is Greek ("στεγανογραφία") for "hidden writing." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

Steganography has a very ancient origin. I read a story of a message tattooed on a slave’s shaved head, covered by his hair re-growth, and exposed by re-shaving. It was also used by various secret agents, during and post-World War.

I realized there is a great benefit of Steganography in the modern times. This technique can be used to watermark the images – unknowingly. You would not be able to see the watermark unless you run the image through a program. You know the origin of the picture. It can be applied to pictures posted on the internet etc.

I came across another, rather, abuse of this technique.

Flickr is a great photo-blogging site. A pro account gives you unlimited data storage. But all you can store is pictures. Nothing else. People started experimenting with the steganographic techniques to store all kinds of data, under the cover of a jpg file in their flickr accounts. As data storage does not have any limit, it can work as a ‘virtual online backup’. Of course, people would notice the abnormal size of the pictures etc, but I leant that currently the website does not restrict uploading such files. What happens if everyone wants to use these sites as virtual backup sites? Do the websites know about it? Are they willingly allowing it initially so that they can become popular?

Leaving these questions for the websites, I think steganography is a great idea. I think Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”’s anagrams can be termed as steganographic too. Fun.