Work Life Balance and four intelligence (IQ, PQ, EQ, SQ)

Work life balance is much debated subject. A balanced work life creates satisfaction, happiness, positive energy in life. In turn these lead to greater success. Let us take a journey using a car. For a smooth journey, a smooth uniform road is a pre-condition. One will have a bumpy ride despite having best car and excellent wheels if the road has a lot of pot holes. The selection of a job or a work helps in giving a smooth environment where one can have a better ride in a good car.

The second dimension has a good car. I am not discussing here about a very luxurious car which has excellent set of features. Let us talk about a car which has good features to feel you comfortable. What you need next is balanced four wheels. The wheels I will refer to as wheels of life. For a smooth journey balanced wheels help a lot. Let us take an analogy where two wheels represent work elements like career progression and work achievement and other two represent personal life dimensions like excellent relationships and Health. Needless to say one cannot visualize a smooth journey if one of the wheel/tyre is punctured. You need a good heath, an excellent relationships to excel in other two work related wheels.

These four personal influences can be tuned to bring about a balance in the four wheels to lead to a smooth life journey. PQ leading to discipline will help in slicing time to contribute to health, Relationships, Career development and work performance.  Vision will help in setting goals in these four areas. Passion will help in ensuring you enjoy the journey of moving towards your goal. For instance if you decided to have a daily morning walk to help you achieve the health objectives, you are enjoying the morning walk. You may develop a friend who shares your morning walk. At the end, Conscience is the super synchronizing influence which ensures that  ethical synchronization is achieved amongst the four influences.

I have learnt that these influences help you bring work life balance and teach you to remain happy in this great journey called life. It reminds me of an experiment conducted in the US. In 1957, about 1000 people were studied using a set of questionnaire to access the percentage of happy people in the society. In 1957 US was not as developed as we see today. It was found that 1/3^rd of the people studied were happy with their life. A lot of economic development happened in sixties and later. Each citizen had access to amenities for living a good life. In 1992, once again the same experiment was conducted on a similar population. The outcome of the experiment was revealing. It was found that only 1/3^rd of the population studied were happy. The economic well being has no impact on increasing percentage of happy people. The economic parameters can help improve percentage of people having access to amenities of life. But the actual happiness is a function of synchronizing these four personal influences, live a balanced work life and fill life with a great dose of happiness.

Role of Personal goal in Self Management

Targets or Goals bring meaning to an endeavor. It defines where we are going and when we would reach the destination. I have come across many such people in my life who had very clear goal and invariably they achieved it too.

Most of the people working in corporate world have goals to achieve. Depending on a situation, it may be daily, monthly or yearly targets.  I wonder how many have set similar goals for their individual life. Individual goals will be a superset of corporate goals for the individual. While interacting with many people, I have learnt from them that either they have very hazy personal goals or have no personal goals. Naturally this subject requires attention.  I have seen successful people;All of them had clearly defined goals for themselves. Their relentless pursuit made them successful in life.

I would like to share my personal experience: There have been occasions in life when I had dreamt of impossible things. I had my eyes set on the targets, persistently worked towards achieving them and was finally successful. I would like to mention my academic achievements. I remember the day when I picked up the prospectus for admission in XLRI. While going through the same, a thought crossed my mind to get all the Gold medals meant for a batch. I appeared in the test, went through the curriculum without losing focus of  thought (Goal). Needless to say, I always worked towards achieving my goal and sought God’s grace. I was lucky, God obliged me. There have been numerous occasions like this where I set up goals to achieve something. Believe me in all such cases, I always achieved what I thought. At other times, I got into activity trap, got defocused and kept moving without goal. If you don’t know where you are going, then you shall never reach your destination.. This is my personal experience and I am convinced that if you think of achieving something you will surely do it. God or your luck will take you there. I think setting goal in your life makes you different from others who move without goal or getting into the activities trap.

It is important to set a goal in our personal life as well. I would like to introduce here the concept of “Wheel of Life”. Wheel of life can be conceptualized as a wheel having various spokes like physical environment, career, relationships, romance, health, personal development etc. A typical wheel is shown below in the picture. In order to have a smooth journey, you will need to have satisfaction on all aspects (spokes) of the wheel. Just Like a flat tyre of a car leads to a bumpy journey, imbalanced satisfaction across various dimensions (spokes) leads to bumpy journey of life and leads to unhappy individual. It is impossible to have a strained life across some dimensions and a successful professional life.  I advocate others to look at the different dimensions of “wheel of life” and set goals in reach of them. Once you set goals, follow the simple steps of ASK-BELIEVE-RECEIVE as advocated in the book ‘SECRET’.You shall surely reach the target.

ASK: This is the affirmation of Goal. Keep on doing this every day. If you follow a religious faith, ask  God to help you.

Believe: Assume you have already achieved the same. Do it regularly.

Receive: Also visualize the state of happiness after achieving the goal.

Repeat this three step process relentlessly. Needless to say this has to be backed up with efforts. Saint Kabir has said-

Karat karat abhyaas ke, jadmati hot sujan.
Rasari aawat jaat te, sil par parat nisaan.

Relentless effort makes a difficult task simple like soft rope creates a deep impression on hard wall of a well made of rocks simply because the rope is used time and again to take water out from the well rubbing against the hard wall.

The last part of my discussion today is challenges associated with Goal Achievement.

1.       Not having goal: This is the main cause of lack of achievement. One needs to set balanced goals across all dimensions of “Wheel of Life”.

2.       Loss of Focus: Sometimes people set goals, but lose focus eventually.

3.       Lack of review: One needs a formal periodic review of his or her goals and fine tuning dynamically.

I am surprised if the challenges are so simple to act then why don’t we do this? The answer is the activity trap.  Friends, have faith in this simple phenomenon which will work wonders for you and will change the path of Life.

Set balanced Goals, stay focused, stay calm, you will reach the destination.

Self Discovery is the beginning of “Self-Management”

In these  competitive and turbulent times, Self-Management plays a vital role for a sustained organizational performance and Individual’s growth. Organizations expect more from employees and families in turn expect more from earning members so that they can have a peaceful life and the society also expects us to contribute back to create a better society.  All these put pressure on an individual’s time. In the process the individual gets into routine activities, making it difficult to come out of a daily routine and think creatively towards contributing to all the participants who have expectations.

Stephen Covey has nicely defined whole person paradigm as a sum total of four essential elements viz. Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit. In order to get best out of oneself one has to synchronize activities across these four dimensions and understand ones strengths and limitations across these dimensions.  One has to look at how all these elements can effectively contribute towards the expectations from stakeholders like organization, family and society.  It is about knowing yourself, knowing your strengths, weaknesses and managing these towards overall expectation. Such synchronization is not only pleasing to self but highly contributing towards others and results in stress free natural life.

I would like to bring here the famous framework for understanding self; the Johari Window. The window is shown below in the diagram:

An individual can look at personality traits, personal values, habits, needs, emotions etc. across these four quadrants. If one has the maximum awareness about self, it will help in maximizing ones effectiveness and success.

Unknown Self: This is an area which is known to others but not known to self.  Sometimes these strengths could bring enormous success to individuals.

Role of an admirer :  

Lord Ram was in search of someone who could cross the ocean and go to Lanka. It was a mammoth task. Hanuman was  unaware about his hidden super human powers. An elderly bear, Jambant from Sugriva’s army made him aware about his hidden power. He realized the same and with utmost sincerity, devotion and humility and completed the task. The role of a third person in unfolding Unknown self is huge. Everyone needs a Jambant in his\her life to make him\her successful.

Role of a critic:

Kabir, a great Hindi poet and thinker has said

निन्दक नियरे राखिये, आंगन कुटी छवाय, बिन पानी-साबुन बिना, निर्मल करे सुभाय !

It means – “Keep your critic close to you. Give him a cottage in the courtyard of your house, because he cleanses your nature without soap and water.”

One has to reach to a level of maturity to understand the role of a critic.  It plays a significant role in self discovery.  Probably critic is more important than an admirer and it requires more maturity at individual’s level to handle the critic.

Role of Introspection (Internal perception):

Introspection is the self-examination of one’s conscious thoughts and feelings. A person’s own conscious thought is the best guide for self. What he or she needs is to come out of activity trap, sit coolly and think. One should think about self across all the quadrants, looking at attributes. It helps in identifying areas of strengths, weaknesses and steer towards the future effectively. Introspection plays a vital role in optimizing private self as per Johari Window.

Role of Meditation:  Hidden self is untapped & an unknown potential of an individual. Smaller this area, better it is. It is said all human beings have tremendous power. In some cases a large portion is active while in other cases a large portion is hidden. Meditation and self concentration can help a lot to unfold some of these potentials.

I think based on foregoing discussions one will be able to paint his profile and have better understanding of self. Self discovery/ Awareness is the first milestone in the journey of “Self Management”.

What are Agile Principles?

All management gurus univocally argue that for bringing excellence in work place in today’s world one need to bring empowerment, collaboration, learning environment and opportunity to excel to the workforce. Agile development fits very well with 21st century management thinking. Its principles are fully aligned with this knowledge economy needs. They are:

• Customer Focus: Customer is the king in today’s world. Everyone has choices and power to choose. You can never be successful ignoring customer needs, his likings; his feelings need to account for. If you do not do it, someone else will do it. Therefore, it is essential to keep Customer at the nucleus of development cycle. Agile states this one as its first principle.

• Adaptive Planning: Planning is putting a schedule in future. Since it deals with future, longer planning horizon leads to larger inaccuracies in the plan. Agile believes in adaptive planning. You fine tune your plan as you progress. Progress brings better visibility and planning is more realistic.

• Verifiability Driven: The classical development suffered from lack of visibility. The customer did not know till he was shown a product at the time of delivery. Many times the product was not the one which customer needed. Agile believes in verifiability. Customer sees each feature being developed. He sees how it looks like. It helps in bringing out what is the best for the market and what is needed by the customer.

• Avoid wastage: Wastage is the cost. More wastage means high cost of development. When you reject a product at a later stage, it has to be redone. Very often a new design may be needed. It not only derails the schedule but also raises development cost abnormally. Therefore, Agile suggests customer involvement at each stage of development. Customer verifies the development through daily scrum meetings and helps in avoiding wastage of efforts.

• Collaboration: Collaboration is today’s world mantra. We have specialist in each area. They need to collaborate to bring a solid product. Agile brings them together. Agile is based on collaboration amongst different stakeholders like Product Owner, Sales, Designer, and Developer. The different agile ceremonies are the collaboration platforms. They are scrum meeting, sprint planning, sprint review meeting, Retrospective etc. Collaboration amongst the team members is the key in Agile.

• Visibility: CFO is the custodian of the budget and expenses in a company. Product owner needs to ensure that the development is completed on time and under the budget. Change control in classical development used to bring shock to these senior stakeholders. They did not know except through the progress report, how the project was progressing. The Project manager managed the project and often gave surprises. It is therefore necessary to bring visibility at all levels. Agile brings the same through its ceremonies. Customer knows how the project is shaping and what features are being built for next release?

• Technical Excellence: Technology is a complex stuff. It is used to develop a software. Very rarely a large proportion of technology features are exploited. At most if one works independently, one is about to utilize 20-30 % of available features. In the case of agile, collaboration, cross discussion amongst the stake holders helps utilize best out of the technology. Agile brings technical excellence.

Why Agile came into being when life cycle processes like Waterfall, Iterative existed?

Whenever we have problem in delivery we often talk about requirement were not stated clearly. The client starts talking about lack of understanding at the development team. This process goes on and we have unhappy customer. One of the significant reasons for this gap is development mindset and the development methodology. Generally, before advent of Agile, Waterfall was predominantly followed in software product development. The development methodology believed in locking down the requirement and taking care of changes through change control. Locking down requirement appears simplistic at the outset, whereas it is difficult to achieve for the factors stated below.

•In the beginning we have less understanding about the project requirements There is a significant gap in the understanding level of expert and the person who records the requirements leading to gap and erroneous requirement gathering
•Requirement documents run in hundreds of pages. It is difficult to verify accurately
•The customer needs and environment is dynamic. They keep on continuously evolving

Basic belief of freezing requirement is erroneous. Particularly if one is developing the state of the art product, one has to bring in the best features; best technology and both of them keep on evolving. Change control as a means of bringing in changes leads to conflict of interest between the developer and the customer, thus the product suffers.

Contract & Requirement document is used for getting change control approved. The focus shifts from developing the best product to managing the scope and getting maximum for given contract. If I may ask how often you have seen the big four completing project in time? Answer will be rarely. At the same time we praise their capability of managing project. The whole focus shifts to project management and not the product development. In such situation one can never deliver a very good product.

We live in exponential world. Changes are happening continuously. If one wants to develop product in this situation, one has to learn to live with the evolving exponential world and its dynamics. Technology is changing continuously, Industry standards, which helps build software keeps on changing for better Customer has better understanding of needs as they progress on development. Waterfall asked to freeze requirements before we moved to design stage. The poor owner of product had no option and did something under stress. Some thinker realized that this is not good for the evolving environment and wanted to bring agility in the process. Agile was born. Agile may not be answer to all development problems but it matches with the dynamics of today’s world. It fits seamlessly with development needs.

I guess if you ask your kid to freeze his career aspirations and work on it relentlessly, I am afraid he will term it as a criminal action. They want to explore the options, understand it well before committing himself. Waterfall did not address that. It was cruel enough to ask for full commitment before confirming how the product is going to look like. Agile gives a pre-view, it provides flexibility, it gives option to change as you move.

Leading from the Front

Leadership can be defined as one's ability to get others to willingly follow. Some sit and debate whether leaders are made or born. These discussions/debates bring to light the traits of a great leader in front of people. But there cannot be a more powerful way of demonstrating the traits with a live example which was witnessed by a large number of people in the society.

Just about a month back the whole nation was going through a great Euphoria. Everyone wanted to bring the Cricket World Cup back home. There was a lot of excitement, a lot of debate and speculations. Each win for India was difficult. The final with Sri lanka will be remembered for a long time not only by cricket fans but by all. Before the final match two of the heroes in Indian team were Virendra Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar. People expected a lot from them. Sri Lankans played first and put a target of 270 for Indians. The early fall of wicket brought frustration for Indians and excitement for Sri Lankans
Sehwag 1 – 0
Tendulkar 2-31
Kohli 3 – 114

After Tendulkar returned to pavilion, Virat Kohli and Gambhir brought a ray of hope for all the Indians and the Indian team. We all know India has a depth in batting; however we have also witnessed India’s batting collapse while playing under pressure. After the fall of Kohli’s wicket, Yuvraj was the next batsman in line. But what happened will be remembered by all Management analysts for a long time. Dhoni showed up. Dhoni was in a bad form during this tournament. The game was exciting. Dhoini demonstrated confidence. He played with a lot of competence. His game was the best in this tournament. He took charge and led from the Front. This was an excellent example of a great Leader who maintains calmness under crisis, leads from the front, demonstrates confidence, inspires his teammates and plays intelligently. This was a great example for a management reader.

Five qualities of a great leader as described by Kouzes and Posner’s in the book “The Leadership Challenge” are:

Honesty
Forward- looking
Inspiring
Competent
Intelligent

Exhibiting these traits will inspire confidence in your leadership during crisis management. As a leader your skill at exhibiting these five leadership qualities is strongly correlated with people’s desire to follow you as their lead.

Let us go back to the World cup cricket match. Dhoni partnered with Gambhir and took the Indian team out of crisis. He lead from the front while demonstrating the traits of a great Leader. India was 223 for 4 when we lost Gambhir’s wicket. Gambhir played very well but unfortunately could not complete his century. Yuvraj joined Dhoni and once again we were victorious. This was a well deserved victory. The game had a lot of excitement, an exemplary performance by Dhoni. Besides his exemplary performance he demonstrated Exemplary Leadership qualities by Leading from the Front.

Leadership is all about helping others to realize their worth and make them perform at their best. It is also about leading from the front in crisis.

In the Wonderland of Management Culture

At the outset, I would like to wish all my readers a very Happy and Prosperous year 2011. Let the year bring a culture of Performance and Prosperity.

Very often we hear about Management Culture. You might have come across many types of companies. They could be family owned organization, publically owned and professionally managed by a specific National or a Multinational organization. There is a common thread of success across all of them. I have heard many debates in my life. I feel lucky to work with all of them. I’m sharing with you what I have heard in different companies.

Let us take a family managed Organization first. The spirit of Entrepreneurship was buzzing all over the organization. Innovative ideas, new thoughts, execution at lightning speed, urge to implement all techniques, were some of the talk of the town. The Management always tried bench marking itself with the best possible in the world. They thought of best practices and how to exceed the expectation of shareholders. In the process, at times, the human feeling did not get the due weight age. But the organization prospered. A good example could be creation of a mammoth umpire by Mr. L.N. Mittal. I don’t remember having heard even a single time the world “Culture.”

Let us take a professionally managed organization. The organization run on best practices, it had time tested systems, decisions were taken based on well debated process. It had a sound management system. People were heard and Manager decided. Again rarely I heard the world “Culture.” One of the best example in this category could be Tata Steel.

The third category of company is a so called Multinational. The Multinational could be an Indian Multinational or a western managed Multinational. I have heard story of a very mediocre performing company in this category. This was one of the cases where I heard about the world “Culture” every now and then. Possibly the company had poverty of Management and performance and got satisfaction by using the world “Culture” all the time. A group of sycophant Managers aligned and echoed the “Culture” word synchronously. For them creating a niche for themselves at cost of anything was the sole goal. The result “ Non-Performance”. In MNC category we all have read and heard about GE and Jack Welcsh. I have not come across the world “ Culture” many time in Jack Welch book. The Performance under Jack Welch is a known fact now and being referred by management practitioner all over.

Based on the above examples, I think culture of the all organizations can be grouped in two categories namely a Performance Culture & a Non-Performance Culture. There is no classification on the basis of origin and management of the organization or any other factor. It is an amazing experience to be a part of performing organization. If you think you are a part of non-performance, sit down, introspect, and get into a performance focussed oganization. You will learn, enjoy and prosper. Performance brings prosperity and not the so called world “Culture”.

Application Portfolio Analysis framework can help improve return on IT Assets

Globalization and the dilution of trade boundaries have forced industries to evaluate various options for cost-effective operations. Industries now face the challenge of channeling resources to meet organizational objectives in continuously changing environments. Information Technology plays a major role in such a dynamic business environment. However, with the advent of new technological tools and continuous advancement, the IT environment has become very complex.

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) regularly add new assets to their IT portfolio, making the portfolio more and more complex. In addition, they face the task of aligning business needs and IT assets. Cost consideration is becoming increasingly important. The challenge is to do more for less.

In such a dynamic situation, the Management of the IT Portfolio has become an increasingly important and crucial task. Increasing number of CIOs are now pursuing IT Portfolio Management as a tool to prioritize investment decisions, decide the location of various activities, evaluate the various assets with the value it delivers, and much more.

Each asset in the portfolio is evaluated against parameters like cost of procurement, cost of managing, and indeed the cost of replacing the same. “Total cost of ownership” is seen in conjunction with the value delivered by the asset. Optimal Management of the assets leads to minimal TCO.

A study by Gartner states that, “Approximately 30 percent of the total cost of ownership during the life of an application is for its maintenance and management.” One can achieve a significant degree of cost reduction by maneuvering the costs associated with maintenance and management.

Portfolio Management is the process of managing assets and investments in order to achieve desired organizational goals. The portfolio is a combination of assets that are expected to provide certain returns. It has risks associated with it. Portfolio Management includes selecting a set of assets congruent with the set goal, managing the economic lifecycle of those assets, dynamically divesting and investing in different assets to optimize gains. In the IT context, the portfolio includes application software, hardware, infrastructure, resources, processes, and so on. While financial Portfolio Management has been in practice for many years, IT Portfolio Management is relatively new and gaining ground. An integrated framework that helps in investment, divestment, modifications, and movement of application assets has become a necessity to align business and IT goals of an enterprise.

There are applications to help manage IT portfolio for a CIO. I think it may be prudent to get into the habit of understanding IT Portfolio as a concept before investing in expensive Software. A heuristic method for managing IT Application Portfolio is very helpful and cost effective. It is easy to implement. The framework has been implemented at several places and has given enormous benefits to the clients. The detailed methodology is available at http://www.codeproject.com/info/search.aspx?artkw=bishram.

Relentless Effort leads to Success

We all understand what the word “Success” means. But at the same time defining success precisely is impossible. Does the success lies in the eyes of the world: winning an Olympic gold medal; running a large organization; making things happen; making a lot of money; creating a big name for self; receiving the noble prize? Or is it personal success: the person who towards the end of life feels that it has been a happy, fulfilled, and enjoyable life? Whatever may be the definition one thing comes up clearly that success means different things to different people. It is important to sketch a mental map of success and put efforts relentlessly towards that. Sometimes you may get it, sometimes you may not. Don’t be discouraged simply because you could not taste the fruits of success in line with your own definition.

This reminds me of some key learning from the book titled “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. The author describes four factors affecting the success.















Out of the four factors mentioned by the author we can control only one “Effort”. Therefore, keep concentrating on the effort and don’t worry much about other factors. Many times, despite of the best effort you may not succeed. We all know the legend Amitabh Bachan who was rejected for voice test by All India Radio. There are numerous examples like that. Amitabh did not lose his hope. He kept his effort on. And we all know the end result. Success followed him.
Sometimes, you may partially select a better opportunity- hoping your judgment is right. Even a mediocre performer in a fast growing company does much better than an excellent performer stuck in a mediocre company. This may be kept in mind while short listing opportunities.
The bottom line is concentrate on “Effort” intelligently. Success will follow you.

Setting Up Holistic Metrics System for a Software Company

Since then, Metrics based management has come a long way. Many companies have adopted Metrics for reporting their performance. I have noticed a very interesting scenario. Metrics is collected, and presented with beautiful charts, and trends are shown but the project still limps. Many buzz words like “Defect Prevention” are a part of regular quality discussion in the companies. I have noticed that the Metrics program, very often, are not connected with a set of parameters which can be used to meet customer expectations. I have seen that many times a schedule variance is computed in product release scenario with zero deviation. Whenever product releases are planned, the release date is announced. If the release progress is not in line with the release date, the scope is adjusted to meet the release date. In such a situation, going with the traditional definition of schedule variance is elusive. What is required here is a Metric which points out the problem and leads towards the possible solution. In software companies, you can find many such instances where the buzz words keep floating without any real benefit to the organization.

A set of Metrics is put in place and the same is collected and tracked for all similar projects. There is no customization to suit the requirements of customers, employees and shareholders.

This paper attempts to identify the specific needs of these stakeholders and suggest a framework for developing Metrics to suit specific needs of various stakeholders. In the process, the organization will have holistic dashboard representing health of the project from different perspectives.

Read the full article at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/mentor/HMetricsSystem.aspx.

Confronting the Brutal Reality: foundation for a sustained success

The famous book by Jim Collins- Good to Great was a synopsis of research on the traits of successful leaders and flourishing companies. The book turned out to be the #1 best seller, Since the findings were simple yet powerful in driving success. One of the traits was “Confront Brutal reality”. I consider this as a very powerful milestone for a journey towards success. Very often in our life, we tend to evade the truth. We rarely report the fact to seniors in the “as is” form. I believe there are many reasons that compel us to adopt such behavior.

A few of these reasons are:

1. Managers do not want to hear unpleasant truth. They like good news. As a result, the organization develops a tradition of sugar coating the “brutal reality“ before reporting it to the higher authorities. I wish this would make it really sweet.

2. The reporting manager hopes that he would be able to correct the “brutal reality” in a short time, and the lapse will be short lived. Seniors may not be aware of the fact. Unfortunately, very rarely it remains that way. Those of us coming from industrial unit background or sales background (FMCG, Telecom Service Providers, etc.) know very well that in order to show the numbers against monthly target, particularly when there is a shortfall, month closing is often dragged to 1st or 2nd of the following month. The cycle continues, and 2nd becomes 3rd, 3rd becomes 4th and so on so forth. But to no avail.

3. People have reluctance to confront the reality and resolve the issue. They keep procrastinating solving the issue. They forget that delaying a problem is not same as resolving an issue. Sometimes, capability to resolve a problem is also a concern.

Many a times, there could be other reasons too. I think the causes listed above are the most common ones in many companies.

I would like to emphasize that most of the companies are in the “Trap of not confronting the brutal reality”. If you look at the study by Jim Collins, only 11 companies out of 1435 good companies were classified as great companies in the study. This means, just less than one percent of the companies are great. Few of the companies from 11 slipped downwards subsequently. Nothing is perpetual. Change is inevitable. The Great companies will slide to good or bad depending on the prevailing leadership. If less than 1 % companies are really great, not all of us may get a chance to work in such an environment in our life time. My recommendation is to believe in this universal principle. If the environment does not allow it, try doing it in different form. Do not circumvent. It does not help.

I recommend internalizing the Principle of “Confront Brutal Reality”. You are fortunate if your leadership also believes in the principle, if not, try out different manifestations. Do not leave the concept.

Always remember, delaying a problem is not solving the problem. Confronting, leads you to look for solutions. It creates a better culture. It creates simple working environment which is based on truth. There are many more advantages.

The learning is: Confront the brutal Reality. Even though you have to pay the price in the short run, you will reap long term benefits. I believe “Confronting the Brutal Reality is like putting a strong foundation for a soaring structure. It is a must for sustained success.

Differentiation is the key for Success

Differentiation is a cultural issue. It is a mindset. It is the way managers create value in the organization and make the organization successful. Many times we keep on thinking about differentiating our products and services. However we find difficulty in coming up with a clear differentiator. I think it is a mindset issue. If we remember Darwin’s principle – “Struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest”, the answer becomes very clear. We have clear choices- differentiate or die. The moment one internalizes this thought; one starts getting ideas that create differentiation.

The next question that arises is where to create this differentiation? The answer is simple. We can put in a single word – “everywhere” – people, process, product and technology.

Jack Welch showed an excellent example of creating differentiation. 20-70-10 rule was very famous in his management style. It was about classifying people in different buckets. The 10% at the bottom had to go. This created a performance oriented culture, a competitive environment and clarity of goals among people. The outcome was a boost in the performance of the entire organization.

Jack Welch also talked about getting out of the industry if you are not among the top three in any industry. This philosophy brings alive the spirit of differentiation. It helps. You have to look for the best of the class processes and the best of technology.

Life is all about differentiation. You have to keep it up or allow it to die. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean. Each one of us has limited resources. However the winning leaders invest the resources where the payback is the highest. This again is the differentiation principle.

In fact it is very interesting to know that our school system, our play system and any system you can think of is nothing but a model of differentiation. The results are based on classifying people in different buckets. Isn’t this a classic example of differentiation? We all accept this fact in our school days but for some reason we struggle to accept this simple truth in our professional lives. Isn’t this a mindset issue? The answer is simple.

Here are a few myths about differentiation:

1. Differentiation is unfair because it pushes people, and processes out. One needs to understand that sending nonperformer out helps others who stay behind. Also non-performers find their own way and area where they finally emerge as winners. This is an adjustment process and fair to all. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that the system should not be polluted with politics. Keeping the system apolitical is the boss’s job. If the boss fails to keep it apolitical, the decline is certain.

2. Differentiation pits people against one another and undermines teamwork. I would argue that team work is a necessity for creating a great organization. In fact differentiation and team work can be integrated. One can create a differentiation at the team level as well.

3. Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalues people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented. Each role has its skill requirements. If being extrovert is a requirement of a role, then differentiation has to be created for it. Shy as well as talented people will emerge in top brackets for different kinds of role.

Therefore, differentiation is the key for success. The leader has to create an environment, a culture which supports differentiation, which is apolitical, and is based on merit. After all, results speak; neither numbers nor the differentiation, Principle lies. It is the ability of the leader to bring differentiation that is important and needs to be tweaked for achieving success. The bottom line is: differentiate to succeed.

Importance of Voice and Dignity in creating a Successful team

Last week, I wrote on “Importance of candor” in creating a successful organization. Candor is great. Candor should not hurt dignity of an individual in the team. I will talk today on the importance of “Voice & Dignity” in creating a successful Organization.

Every person in the world wants voice and dignity and they.deserve them. This is a great philosophy and gives voice and dignity to an individual as a right. However, this phenomenon has a great implication on the performance. Voice and Dignity allows people to express themselves freely. Some people are smarter than the others. No one has proprietary on great ideas. Creating a culture where everyone can express themselves brings many ideas on the forefront. Few of the ideas will be great, some of them will be average and others may not have great potential. But it is important to have a culture of free expression. People feel empowered; they give their best under such culture.

It is good as long as the culture allows idea generation and a free expression. Managers or anyone who is accountable for the result has to get the idea and take a call on the appropriateness and its implementation. That’s what management judgment is all about; it’s a tricky game. The giver of the idea tends to have a great passion for their ideas. In the long run people have to trust that ideas are shortlisted on the basis of merits. There could be judgmental error and every system allows for such error. But fairness in short listing of ideas and its acceptance helps in creating an environment full of trust. This leads to better outcomes.
Being too candid sometimes might hurt ones dignity. This is a delicate balance and it’s the work of the manager to balance candor & Dignity evenly. One may have their own way to bring about such a balance. But a proper balance between the two goes a long way to create a positive environment.

I have been privileged to interact with customers from the western countries. They have always squeezed out their reservations on Indian resources thereby expressing themselves freely. I have realized that there are certain inhibitions towards creating an open environment for Voice & Dignity. Few of them are as follows:

• Cultural issues: Certain cultures are more expressive as compared to others. If you are from such a culture where traditionally being extrovert is not encouraged; you have to realize this and do an extra bit to overcome such an inhibition.

• A proper platform is necessary. Like in a Scrum meeting everyone is supposed to talk about his work, his challenges and his plan. If Scrum master manages properly, such interactions are bound to create a proper atmosphere.

• For a given problem, one may have multiple perceptions. Perceptions lead to solutions and since perceptions are different, solutions are bound to be different. In order to come to an understanding, communicating ideas, listening to others point of view is necessary. Communication corrects a lot of gap and creates a better environment. It gives dignity to the participants.

• Sometimes we are impatient for results. We see through our own eyes and start cutting free expression. I think attempt has to be made to listen and then a proper decision can be taken. This could be time consuming but a balance is necessary. It has tremendous upsides.

In order to bring this culture, one will need
• A Process
• A measurement how we are doing and
• Independent feedback

This is an important aspect for building a successful team, a successful organization which can sustain and grow under all odds.

Importance of Candor in creating a successful Organization

A leader energizes people, guides them to move on the path of excellence and finally helps the company to succeed. “Candor” holds a central position in leadership. Many a time leaders believe in giving positive feedback to employees and abstain from being straight and candid on difficult issues. Leadership is not mathematics. But if one looks at the success stories of legends like Jack Welch, one will find that Candor played a central role in his leadership style. It is worthwhile to look at a few quotes from his famous book: “Winning”.

“My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over and I’m telling you that it was my candor that helped to make it work.”

“From the day I joined GE to the day I was named CEO, twenty years later, my bosses cautioned me about my candor. I was labeled abrasive and consistently warned that my candor would soon get in the way of my career.”

Leadership is based on trust. If you are able to create trust amongst your people, even a tough message is taken positively. Everybody is intelligent; he understands the positives and negatives of their actions. Sometimes, one might get derailed. If the bosses communicate straight and is concerned about well being of his manager; the message gets across. “Candor” is the key.

Candor leads to many positives in the team:

1. Builds Trust: I have discussed about the same in foregoing paragraph. I believe Candor is the key for creating a team based on trust. Sugar-Coating a difficult message does not convert a failure to success, or an unpleasant situation to a pleasant situation; it just creates a pseudo feeling of cohesiveness.

2. Candor brings more people in the conversation. This leads to a lot of thoughts and ideas. People express themselves.

3. Candor leads to quick action.

4. Candor creates transparency. We all talk about transparency.

5. Finally, candor helps reduce cost. Time is not wasted; expectations in the organization are clear. Decision revolves around facts and communicating the same straight. Hence it leads to savings.

If Candor has so many positives let us look at why it is not the most accepted “Word” in the corporate world. Some of the inhibitions are:

1. I think the first and foremost reason is our belief that respect comes from not telling unpleasant truth. We speak pleasant ones but shy away from the unpleasant ones.

2. Our upbringing plays important role too. We have been taught to soften bad news. It is hard to change the style once we come in professional career.

3. Candor comes from Confidence. Sometimes lack of confidence and perceived risk in being candid is also the reason for lack of Candor.

Having discussed the inhibitions, let us spend some time talking about the steps in bringing Candor in a set up. Ideally, leadership styles flow from top. Sometimes bringing candor at a lower level of leadership chain can create a little bit of conflict. However, if one is careful and works towards bringing a balance one can bring a candid culture in a section of the organization as well. What you need to do is to align ‘Candor’ in your management style. It means:
• Reward it
• Praise it
• Spread it
• Declare winners out of people who demonstrate it.
• Keep on trying. Change takes time. Once people learn it and internalize it, change becomes self sustaining

There is a fine line between Candor and treating people with respect. I think a balance is necessary. To conclude, whenever you read stories of successful organizations, you will find “Candor” as the nucleus.

Align, Simplify, Contain and Push – You will always win.

Frequently, I have come across several success stories, and the way the success was achieved by different companies. We come across failure stories more often than the success stories.It is interesting to note that numerous companies which followed similar techniques have different experiences with the success rates. A few companies got success and others failed despite using the same techniques. Let us take for example, the success of GE under the leadership of Jack Welch- Of course his charismatic leadership was the most important factor for success. They made use of six-sigma as one of the tool for driving change in the organization. I have been associated with another company (name not important) where six-sigma was used as a tool to drive improvement. The result was not even closer to what GE accomplished. The question arises; what are the factors, which create such an amazing difference?

I would like to share my experiences on this subject. Following are my observations:

1. Leadership: Our famous Election commissioner, T N Seshan mentioned that the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle. Leadership is the most important factor. You need Passion, focus and drive to make things happen.

2. Alignment: The second important factor is aligning the initiatives. A clear goal, properly cascaded down the line with ample clarity (purpose) of the initiative is an absolute necessity. In the absence of alignment, there is hardly any progress. Employees put a lot of efforts and there are burnouts. Eventually, Results evade you.


3. Simplicity: Keeping the initiatives simple is a great power. Ram Charit manas (written in simple Hindi) became a huge success compared to Valmiki Ramayana (written in Sanskrit). The single important reason was simplicity. It is very clear from the acceptance and popularity of this literature in masses.

4. Containment: Containing the number of initiatives is of paramount importance. The number should be ideally three, certainly not more than five in any organization. Whenever, you come across increasing number of initiatives; use align and simplify to contain the numbers.


5. Push: A push from leadership, seriousness in implementation is the Execution Mantra of the initiative. One needs to talk about the initiative each time you see your reports. You need to take appropriate feedback and be willing to tweak the initiative.

Whenever I have looked at these factors, the winners and losers have stood out clearly. Therefore, before getting and implementing any big idea think of “Align, Simplify, Contain and Push”- you will win.

Do what you Love: Fame will follow you.

I happened to watch a short movie on a famous book – The 8th habit by Stephen R. Covey. The summary of the movie can be stated as – “Find Your Voice & Inspire Others to Find Theirs”. This is a great paradigm. I have realized this to be very powerful in whatever we do.

The 8th habit is: Find your Voice & Inspire Others to Find Theirs. The essence of this habit is that you will find your voice, when you can say that you are cent percent involved in what you are doing with your life. By cent percent involvement, what is meant is that your body, mind, heart and spirit are all engaged in the endeavor - whatever that is for you.

I read the convocation speech by Steve Jobs, Apple CEO. I found it thought provoking. The speech is available at the following link:

http://www.lifeofexcellence.com/audio/SteveJobs_StandfordConvocationSpeech.pdf

I am reproducing here an extract from the speech:

“Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm
Convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love?”

One of the aspects the paragraph highlights is “Doing what you Love”. I think both Stephen Covey and Steve Jobs talked about the same concept. The convergence of doing and your Inner Voice makes you successful.

It is often hard to get into doing what you love. We get carried away with social, family, organizational and peer pressures. I do not think “success is copy able” One can achieve new heights in doing what he loves. Today’s society offers tremendous opportunities in each area. First you have to find for your “Inner Voice” before you start helping others to find theirs. Henry Winkler had once quoted: “Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path.”

I will discuss some of the visible symptoms once you have found your voice. The process is iterative. Just keep on trying till you see some of these symptoms in your daily life:

1. You start feeling very passionate about doing the things you love. PASSION is the key word. You feel a high energy level.
2. Great ideas cross your mind on the subject. You bring or influence big change.
3. You live with the thought; you work with it; you sleep with it.

There could be many more, but I think these three are most important. These will be visible to people around you.

Let us spend few minutes on the timing of finding your voice. I think there is no rule. Someone can find his Inner voice very early in life, someone may find it quite late. One thing I like to mention here is pursuing something you Love is the key. It is never too late. You can find many more examples around you on timing. One thing which is common is the after effects it brings. And they are Success and happiness. Do what you love; fame will follow you.

Creating Stickiness in the Work Force

The IT industry in India has seen unprecedented growth in the last decade. It has helped the growth of Indian export thereby serving a bigger purpose in our national framework. Today the IT industry contributes 6% of our GDP. In such a short time it is a great achievement. However, it has also brought a lot of challenges for the company. One of them is high mobility in the work force. The opportunities are enormous and it leads to high mobility. IT is a knowledge industry. People are the Main assets. If one witnesses a high turn around in people, quality of deliverables suffers. We will discuss some key issues related to high attrition.

Industry survey, exit interviews are and other analysis of exits point to few important parameters for high attrition. Few top ones are:

1. Growth in business: Absence of growth in business is the most important factor resulting in high attrition. The industry is young; its participants are ambitious. They look for fast growth. The business growth brings enormous opportunities for them. It is noticed that the larger companies like TCS, Infosys have lower percentages of attrition compared to mid-sized companies. Undoubtedly these companies have also been showing faster pace of growth as well.

2. Opportunities for working in exciting technologies: Techies are those who love working on newer stuff. They are passionate about new technologies. If a company can create a platform which imparts learning opportunities on newer technologies, it creates a big stickiness for many techies. There could be companies working in niche markets like on mobile Technologies, which provide tremendous opportunities to work with leading edge technologies. For others, there is a high correlation between growth and technological opportunities. A company can also create an environment where technological initiatives are encouraged but finally; it has to be aligned to its business direction.

3. Work Environment: This term becomes a little abstract unlike the previous ones. It includes the work culture, participation, empowerment, your concern for the growth of the employees, etc. etc. I will argue that one can create a work culture inside the four walls of the office, which may be different than the prevailing work culture in the company. This could be very positive. Wipro Chairman Azim Premji has said- “if you see higher attrition in a team, look at the manager of the team”. Taking this positively, a team manager can create a unique work environment to create stickiness in his team. I will deliberate more on this aspect and the softer issues.

“Salary is often proved to be one of the main causes of high attrition”. I will argue this is the most misrepresented factor for attrition. The trigger starts from the other factors and finally in pursuit of a job, one lands up getting a better salary. Therefore, I argue, salary is the hygiene factor. We all need it but it does not trigger attrition!

Having discussed all these, how can we create stickiness in our team? I shall discuss today a softer factor which might bring a tremendous impact on the work force. In our industry, we deal with people. And people have emotions. If we are able to support someone’s emotion, I think, we can create a better relationship and a better environment for work. Many companies use competency management as a tool to manage growth and to bring about meaning to their work. I think this could be a great tool in the hands of managers. We need to look at it from two different aspects:

1. Short Term Goal: This is to find out how a resource can add maximum value to his\her current engagement. Typically, we go about identifying factors for the role and assess each resource against the requirement. The gap is found and actions are initiated to bridge the gap. Surely, it helps. It provides aid in executing project successfully. I am afraid it will not help much in creating any stickiness.

2. Long term Goal: Talk about the career aspirations of an individual. Each one of us needs coaching. Use your experience to plan out his career progression journey. Coach him, mentor him. It will bring a different level of relationship between the manger and the resources. You are helping them grow. Many times we get stuck with opportunities available in the company. I think this aspect should not be kept in mind while planning such sessions. Look at the individual and help him grow and build his competency. If this company cannot take care of his needs, someone else will. This is a philosophical initiative, a real initiative, which will help to create a much better work environment.

Therefore, I recommend using the competency analysis not only to manage the current problem but also to support a long term view of helping someone realize his goal. If your company grows, you have an advantage of a competent person managing growth. Due to some reason, if it does not happen then you have made someone capable and you have made a big contribution towards the society. Do not forget, if you have a huge good will, people will queue to come back when you need them. It is a win win situation.

Achievement is Contagious

Some time back I had talked about “Innovation at work place”. There could be various techniques to bring about Innovation. Over a period of time, we have seen that excellence is achieved in certain pockets. It is a challenge to internalize the process and keep on getting continuous improvement through best practices across the company.

It goes without saying that the focus of the CEO or the Operating Manager and his push behind the program is the key to success. Jack Welch talked about giving focus on key programs at each and every touch point with the stake holders. He used to pick up few initiatives – may be two or three. He would work around those; create a reward system, align Performance Management and measurement systems to the initiatives. He would talk about them in each and every meeting. It takes time before it is accepted across. It takes time to change a habit or to develop a new one.

I would like to talk about another simple step which might help bringing internalization quickly and create wonders. I ran a scheme where each individual had to give one suggestion per week to change the customer’s life. The implementation faced a lot of resistance. Some teams got excited and did very well. Others thought it was not possible to give one suggestion per person per week; this was too demanding for them. Naturally, these teams lagged behind. Pushing did not yield much result. Changing the mindset was necessary.

We came with a simple idea of getting all project managers together and discuss their performance on the program. We identified some metrics like (percentage) % compliance, number of suggestions accepted by customers and the value created through these suggestions. We also put a scheme “REWARD for the BEST” wherein we rewarded the best contributor of the month and also the best team. . Criteria’s were defined. All managers voted for the best individual suggestion and team after the brief presentation. This scheme was participative and it empowered every one. They felt a sense of involvement. The situation started changing fast and in a very short time compliance started improving.

The initiative is resulting in more and more suggestions to improve customer business and to create more value. We are on a journey to change the game. Although, the initiative is simple in nature; it brings about Communication, participation, empowerment, transparency and recognition. It goes without saying that a team’s achievement is contagious: It creates positive vibe in the organization. It is a game changing event.

It will not be out of place to mention “Achievement is contagious”. Create an environment which brings various elements like communication, participation, empowerment, transparency and recognition together. Success will follow.

Importance of Set-up Phase in Project Success

Most of the software companies have matured Project Management processes. Generally Project Management has the following phases:
1. Project Initiation
2. Project Planning
3. Project Execution
4. Project Closure
Each of them has its own importance towards the success of the project. I would like to discuss today; the special importance which Project Initiation or Set up has on the project’s success. I would also like to address on the areas where we get caught in meeting the process requirement syndrome and are not able to capitalize on the process benefits from set up process.

The term “Set Up” is taken from Manufacturing, where before each batch production a time is spent for preparatory work. For example lathe machine can do various types of activities. It can turn; it can create threads and many more activities. Each of them requires a particular type of set-up phase. I have never come across a machinist skipping the set up phase or just not thinking through and doing a set up relevant for type of parts he would be manufacturing. However, in Software Engineering area, we all have “Initiation” or “set-up” as a phase. It describes certain elements but invariably the same is not followed in spirit but rather complied within words. The result is inconsistency in delivered quality; Customer dissatisfaction and lost projects. I will highlight on the two examples; one each of a successful case and another case which could have been done better.

We had a project where around 200 Stored procedures had to be documented for intended use of users. This Project will have a different life cycle as compared to a development project where we talk about Requirement Gathering, Analysis, Design, Coding & Unit Testing, Integration, System Testing and User acceptance. Every company may not have a pre-defined life cycles for the work mentioned here. This case was different than a software development case. Initiation elements were mapped for the requirement and a definition was brought for each item. For instance Unit testing could not have been applied in a classic sense here. However, a more relevant unit testing was thought of like a mapping of the technical document to the code base. This becomes a mandatory step for the developer. Similarly, each and every element of the Set-up process was mapped; brainstorming was done with team, SQA and the client. A final blue print of the customized set-up phase was evolved, which was implemented throughout the project. The result was completing the project before scheduled time and meeting 100% quality expectation. It would be wrong to say that only set-up played the role. But one thing which goes without saying is, “Good set-up was the foundation to Quality delivery”.

We had another instance where the customer was a small company and Agile was a buzz word influencing their decision on life cycle selection. The team was new to agile world and there was no onsite element during the life cycle of the project. We did set-up as a process but I think we left a lot of holes in terms of implementing the same in spirit. Some of the items which could have got more attention in the beginning are mentioned below:
• Work shop on agile for the team
• Establishing the ceremonies of agile between customer and the contracting company
• Simulating Team skill required and working for filling gap
• Defining standards explicitly like coding standard, UI standard etc
Some of them were done but not in spirit. The result is struggle during the project implementation.

Many times we mix the technological requirements and commercial expectations together. I recommend in keeping them separate and evaluate each aspect of technological needs. In today’s world, if you want to grow then you have to be aggressive and innovative in your approach. Compromising with the technological requirements will elude success. These could include items like set-up items, transition time frame, transition location, on-site presence etc. We should evolve a solution which is the best and meets aggressiveness and innovation elements. After doing that bring the cost element. The price to change to the customer is a bigger call and may get influenced by many other factors. One should exercise caution in getting influenced with pricing requirements leading to compromise on technical issues.

Therefore my recommendations are:
1. Follow a set-up process in sprit. Do brain storming upfront. Customize the phase to suit project needs.
2. Evolve a technically viable, aggressive and innovative solution. Pricing considerations and customer expectations should be brought in later.
These are some best practices which help in succeeding.


Typically, what I have observed is the process is followed but enough effort is not made to address all issues and life cycle is not tuned to the requirement of the work

Bringing Innovation at Work Place

I have analyzed hundreds of Customer Satisfaction Survey results in my career. I find a common theme in most of the feedback: - that is lack of Innovation. Customers appreciate good work. If you keep on delivering good work consistently, it is quite natural that the customer will get used to it. Many times, even after consistently meeting performance requirements of the work, the Customer Satisfaction Index starts declining. The customer expects more and more compared to what you have been delivering. Meeting requirements become stale. How do we manage customer expectation in such situation? Among the many solutions, “Innovation” is the most important.

I have discussed this issue with many people. Everyone talks about Innovation. Generally, teams or companies differentiate themselves on the “How” part. Knowing the problem is a no brainer; knowing the solution isn’t! I will discuss some simple steps to introduce a culture of Innovation. The method suggested is not exhaustive; it is just an indicative one. One can find out thousands of other ways to bring innovation in his/her environment. Let us keep in mind; only simple methods work.

Before I talk about the prescription, let me take you to the period of the World Wars. History teaches us that innovation, in technology and battle techniques, took place when we were fighting wars. This clearly indicates the mankind has been forced to innovate when survival was at stake. Extending this logic, if we can create a culture which puts demands on individuals; individuals will respond to the demand positively.

I have led many teams of Kaizen and Value Engineering in my life. Let me take a situation. A Kaizen team picks up a problem. It is an informal small group. They brainstorm on the solutions and come up with small improvements. One of the principles of brainstorming is to generate maximum number of suggestions/ solutions without bothering about the quality of the solution. Once the idea generation engine starts working at full capacity; some excellent suggestions will come to the surface automatically. The key is to run the engine at full capacity, empower the participant. I faced a lot of resistance in the beginning in almost all cases. It takes time to pick up momentum. Once momentum picks up, it is hard to stop it. It moves in an auto pilot mode.

One can use a technique like Kaizen or Value Engineering to bring innovation or can have some methods which challenge the participants, focus them towards the goal and define some challenging goals in a short time. The group will perform. I have seen some small routine activities like “one suggestion per person per week towards improving customer’s life”, brings a huge difference in customer perception, morale of the team and project performance. It goes without saying one has to go through “The Inertia” – both static in the beginning and dynamic ones it picks up. Our task is to manage the first Inertia and leave it to auto pilot mode the second part. Naturally, we do not want to stop it.

As mentioned earlier, there could be multiple ways to bring about Innovation. I will share the well known case of Google. Everybody working for Google can work one day in a week on a subject of his or her liking. The subject should be aligned to the overall goal of the organization. This has created a huge impact in the company. The company is known for Innovation. The salient points of this program are:

• A defined method
• Resource allocation
• Empowerment
• A Discipline
• Simplicity

While designing a system, one should keep in mind the above parameters. You can start your own system; as long as it has the above ingredients, it will succeed.