Is work building your lifestyle..

Sunday I had a terrific conversation with an old friend who now works with a school in eastern part of the country, precisely in Assam. The school recently provided them fullton access to Internet and they learnt to use Skye.. The conversation that started from how schools are progressing ended up on a critical topic that I would definitely want to pull up here.. Yes the question does your work help you build your lifestyle..

The teacher friend really towed this thought in a certainly different but amazing way that leads me to ask and answer several questions myself...

"I now use Internet more effectively to keep in touch with friends and future. It also helps me in learning new things quickly than exploring books"

"Because our school children have sports as an integral part of the courses, we now exercise religiously"

"Because kids sometimes gets chaotic, we have altered role playing for kids, this ensures they get to see the further side of tutoring while they study"

Well been into IT, I have always heard the cribs about how people have screwed up lifestyles. "I work for 18 hours, don't get enough sleep, have pressure of deadlines" and "I work night shifts, takes me away from the my social life" blah blah blah... Well it is true, not for all but many of us. We spend 10-12 hours working at the office, 2-3 hours driving to work, another 2-3 hours handling issues/calls and conferences from home. We hardly get 2-3 hours at home with family and at home we just eat, sleep, have breakfast and come back to work. Weekends are full of finishing chores like laundry, grocery, shopping, kids blah blah... now is this what we call lifestyle? Or what type of lifestyle should one expect from this?

Well the answer is... it is not your work that is amending your lifestyle, it is you that is building this lifestyle for you. So for my "watch"ful friends.. working for 4 hours at office is not the answer to building a great lifestyle.. it is what you really do, that can build your lifestyle. Lifestyle is not about how much time you stay at home and at work... lifestyle is your behavior, things you do, habits and your actions with regards to things, people and places... Your work plays a major role in it, but its not about time, its about what and how you do things at work.

So how does work help you build a lifestyle?

Its simple... The person that sits beside your desk, if he keeps his desk dirty... there are very less chances that he will keep his house tidy or vice versa. Go check out. Now if he has got into a habit of keeping his desk dirty, he is not going home and cleaning up things. Don't wonder if you see socks lying around, laundry undone, stale food thrown over in fridge.. blah blah.

If you have an engineer who bluffs on why he could not complete his tasks in time, will surely bluff his spouse, friends on several things.

If you see a guy walking to office late, chances are that he will be late for most of the things that he do.

A guy who doesn't care about how he is dressed at office, chances are that he is never well dressed until been told to do so. If there is a dress code at work, it will help build a good dressing basics in turn help build a lifestyle.

A guy who often runs with hair and unshaven for days, chances are that he doesn't care about some hygiene no matter where he is.

If a certain set of procedures are followed, made to be followed... chances are that those procedures will help you be more effective in curbing your bad habits and making a few good ones to become your lifestyle. Well of course people will have to find a value out of these. Though I must say that I am against setting up RULES, there are those basic terms that can help build lifestyles.

I think its all about the quality of behaviour, habits and what you do at work that sums up to become your lifestyle. The guy who is passionate about a bug-free life would definitely much worried to take enough care of his code and quality of work. Now the question to each one of us.. is work building our lifestyle?

Are we concerned about improving it?

Do we action to improve anything?

We recently initiated a self help learning group as a part of fun@work.. A group that will begin to learn a whole new things on its own. We begin with a new language. We believe the attitude to learn something on oneself can help us improvise our lifestyles. I feel geared up for this experience and certainly those other 5 who join me in this. After all.... your lifestyle is more seen at work than anywhere else. And I certainly want a best one for me...

Now if you are doing some fun@work exercises at your workplace... ensure that you add a glimpse of building a better lifestyle for your team. We decided that we would do the following things in future as a part of fun@work :

1. Be a Chef : Having a day when the team will be asked to cook.. things that do not know , haven't heard of.. An exercise that will help them understand various cuisines in the world.. isn't that a better lifestyle?

2. Book reading : Picking up a best seller and reading it on a day out. Book reading becomes interesting when someone is reading it out for you.. in an effective way of course... isn't book reading a better lifestyle element?

3. Swim party : Our next party, we want it to be a pool party. People can enjoy been in water. Isn't swimming a better exercise? They would do it if they enjoy doing it.. and what fun if it is done with people you love.

So much more... so much more to do to improvise on our lifestyles... I am geared to build a better lifestyle for myself, right in the place where I spend most of my time.

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New Joiner - Boot them, Board them

Booting up new members... a question that has been hitting for a while now...

Since August 2010, we in Pune have doubled up the size of our development Team.. while it is a good thing for any team and is a sign of upcoming prosperity to the Team and Organization... There is certainly a bigger issue to handle . To ensure that the new Team carries old values, improvises what we have and ensure that the characteristics of the company is not changed and at the same time the new member learns all of this in a much much effective way. If you run through the previous thoughts I have shared here you would certainly know why I feel it is important to have this process handled effectively. Also my previous post on New Joiners on the challenges we have faced in the recent past and the strategies we are trying to adopt to make our new joiners more effective... I take chance to put some efforts writing how we are planning to design our boot camp...

A few key ingredients to success of a boot camp is the fact that who runs the boot camp process.. I believe that the reflection of this runner is what takes the boot camp and the new joiner to succeed in boarding the team correctly... The basic elements of Team building form, norm, storm and perform can really be controlled and managed by this face who runs the boot camp. So while we define the needs of boot camp lets say, we put the prerequisite first, then sum of the process of booting the member to the team.

The biggest hurdle in organizations getting their new joiners boarded and started successfully is the missing role.. Yes you need a Boot manager. That guy who would co-ordinate trainings, sessions, tours and walk through and can also step in and be with the booters to bring them upto speed in right time.

Once you have a boot manager, you can build up a flow to manage your boot camp. Ideally I feel the boot camp should be a 4-5 weeks process. This process should be managed with the help of the most senior team members so that the values and organizational goals and clearly flown in the most significant way.

Here are the key elements a boot camp should hold...

1. Boot mates

Companies that have ability to hire in bulk can definitely afford to do this. Create a boot camp where more than 2-3 new joiners are involved. We have always faced an issue where new joiners join us in split of time and the gap is sometimes between 2 weeks to 5.. of course the challenge for smaller organizations is they never need people in bulk so most of the time the new joiner has no counterpart to learn from.

However an ideal situation, if you have boot mates it helps to understand the process effectively, discuss things within and have a better kick start. We have mostly been unlucky with the bulk joiners except for the trainees who really got a real help of joining together.

2. Culture tour

Most of the new joiners are confused on the cultures of the teams and organizations as there is no likely culture education one gets when he starts. Most of the new joiners learn about the culture with time(Though this is how mentoring happens) I favor a culture tour by someone very senior in the team, if someone like a CXO or head of the team can give a cultural walk through it can help the team member understand the team in the following days more effectively. Ideally a cultural tour should be split into multiple days and people [most of these key executives of the company or team]. If a new joiner doesn't understand a culture, he may not be able to contribute effectively. More less if he is a culture unfit.. it may hurt the team long run.

3. Vision

One of the most confusing factors I found joining previous organizations I worked in was lack of information on vision and strategies. I don't say that they don't exist, but if they don't flow out to the new and old members it causes a sort of confusion and clarity issues from a futuristic perspective. A sight of vision from various teams needs to be given to the boot camp members.. like Product Development road map, Technology road map, Services road map, company vision, local office vision. All of this helps the members to accommodate and build expectations accordingly.

4. Deep dive

Well nothing is more easier than getting a developer look at the code and start fixing bugs. The initial days of the boot camp should be architecture and code walk through to the boot camp members by Sr. Tech architects of the team and the process should involve them to do bug fixing right from development to release of what they have fixed. There is nothing more motivating than to see how your bug fix has made to the production and is helping a few customers on the product even before you get into the mainstream development.

6. Mentor

A new joiner needs to know who is mentoring him. A designated member needs to be definitely a key old member of the team who can help the new joiner get booted sooner and with less issues.

Apart from that there are many things the boot camp can contain, those few I found always helpful are listed down:

1. Get the new joiners trained by only senior members of the team. They are in a state to answer queries and they can guide well.

2. A view of infrastructure, tools , product and production environment should be done both by theory and action.

3. Get them assignments that can let them see how they impact the product even before they get to work in the mainstream teams.

4. Introduce them in steps to the entire organization fraternity, so that they can approach who they need to.

5. Get them a place where there trainings can see real time action. Once we put a new joiner in a war room where we were fixing some critical production issues.. Wont believe he till date has been key in getting most production issues handled by himself.

6. Make them fix bugs that they see, and that means those bugs that they see in the code no letting others to fix them in future.

7. Let them see a list of development items they can work on, so they can choose the best they find for themselves. If you are too small for this, then explain why certain project / module is best for them.

8. Keep the boot camp in work area so people can over hear and learn.

9. Do throw challenges at new joiners and ask them for improvements needed in process, tools and products.. they have a best view when they come from outside and this can definitely let them see those issues that you don't.

10. Let them walk free so they can do different things and ask different questions, let them challenge and get challenged.

11. Most of the new joiners somewhere have a feeling of insecurity when they look the surroundings, work etc in the early days of joining.. have regular meetings with them and address these insecurities. A boot team can get these issues in bulk.. but if not then have it handled together.

12. Always apply the same boot process for everyone in the team. This will ensure that all of them have a similar understanding when they join. the roles they play later can be different after the booting is successful.

13. Offer them to quit after the bootcamp.... I read this in Delivering Happiness by Tony Hseish... after the initial training he would offer the new joiners to pick a sum and quit if they did not like the work or team or company. This ensures that you have the guys who want to be with you and not those who would crib all their lives as they got into you. Earlier they leave better for you.

For all of the 10 you need to plan a few days and small exercises not just on technology but also on different topics so that they can alter themselves to the teams. All these exercises should definitely involve old and semi old team members.

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The Power of WHY

Ever asked a question to yourself "Why I did this?" ever been into a situation that made you think Why you did something? Well the problem is we dont ask this question "Why?" atleast not very often to one self or others.. Last week we had 2 of our potential Trainees give a presentation of their understanding of our product.. something that they have learnt with us for the last 2 weeks, we have made this as a practice for the last few months where the interns are given a chance to work closely with us for 2-3 weeks after which they present themselves on what they have learnt over these days before we decide if they fit with us or not...

While the presentation was on, both the trainees gave a overview of the product, what are certain features and how they work etc.. during the presentation some of our Team mates asked a few questions to them, I am certain some these questions gave the brains a kick start... well they could not answer a few but in the end it was good... One important thing I learnt of this presentation is that if you dont know the WHY behind something you will always be standing blank in front of others..

Why this product?

Why this way?

Why this technology?

Why this framework?

Why am I here?

Why Why Why... a certain why's can help each one of us understand product development, management, product and our lives easier.. If you know the answer to a certain set of Why's you surely then can find a way to How and what.. I believe Why should be a core value, should be a part of the culture... and not just asking why, but mentioning why we are doing something should be a integral part of the work too... If you can tell your development team on why you are building something, I am sure they will be able to contribute in a better and effective way... it doesnt need to be documented, it needs to be explained, discussed, brainsotmed and debated...

Those certain why's can help you change the way you see yourself in the team, help you change the way others see at you and your team, help you do better for your team, product, company and self... Just that 1 why at the right time....

So my dear friend, next time you do something or want your team to do something.... just begin with a WHY...

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The Value of Values and Culture

5 yrs ago Kari and Me had a discussion about listing values in various places of the workplace.. Kari had disagreed and mentioned that values should be imbibed and mentored, I agreed that it should be imbibed and mentored to, but I also argued that it should be visible to the team whenever they are in office. When they step in to the office and each one sees that Open mindedness is our key characteristic it will make them realise at a certain point when they are arguing with someone and not ready to accept change which can be good for the organization. I have 2 reasons to write this today...

1. We subscribed to the value of "Initiatives for good" a long time ago. Several team mates initiated a few things and carried them further. This was an awesome thing to happen to our team ever. Some initiatives were just triggered and they were widely and enthusiastically accepted by others.. Be it an initiative to curb a development process or be it a fun activity like playing Carrom tournament in office. For a while I noticed that while we tried and continued to do this.. a big set of team mates [mostly older employees] have lost this value. I see occasions where initiative taken by anyone else is not so widely accepted as earlier, some mates prefer to even run away from it.. for whatever reason this may be. I believe this value though mentored hideously was one key to the success of morals of the team and now that it diminishes, hurts bad. In my attempt to figure out why values get diminished I came across several findings that I write below....

2. Another reason of writing this is my encounter with the book "Delivering Happiness" written by Tony H the CEO of Zappos 2 weeks ago [Thanks to Henrik who wrote a very inspiring email for the Team and Me and referred me to the book]. In his path to make Zappos a more than 120 B company a lot of emphasis was given on Culture, Team and Values... and I must say that his write up explains that it was very important for the Team first to understand what it is... Tony along with Angela send an email to Zappos employees to write down what Zappos culture meant to them.. predominantly the responses became a culture book.. you can find this culture book somewhere on their Team web site...


So as a part of culture building and true value of Values of the team I still feel it is important that your workplace demonstrate the values of your team and company. Of course I now limit this to the development team, but it is important that this is followed for an entirety. Values should just not be consficiated at one layer and ignored at another, subscribed at another.. they have to remain same.. If "Customer is GOD" is one of your values then Customer services should be a factor of greatness not just for your Customer services team, but also your CEO, Sales, Development and even the customers who use your product. I believe if you make your customer happy is just not enough, you have to ensure that you make your customers customer happy by easing up his difficulties.. do you do that? No? Do you want to re-think on your value then?

Anyways.. going back to the way the values and principles diminish... here is what I found when a certain set of values started getting ignored by a few and some of them even took a path of getting diminished...

1. Leaders have to follow. If leads don't, no one will
2. You should never speak about what the problem is, speak about what the solution is... "In doing so the problem is blah blah" gives your team a feeling that they can get away easily by creating a story of a major issue
3. If they want to run away from values, they are not a culture fit. Fire them right away
4. Speak, Do and Speak is the true value mean.
5. Find a way to evolve, if you don't evolve it diminishes.. Water level rises only due to increase in pressure belts
6. Values need to be understood to be followed, if you cannot make them understand it, they wont follow it.
7. Moral policing is negative effect, Moral upbringing is not.
8. Shove out ego's, to shove it out first find the ego's on where they exist

For the issues mentioned in point 1, We are working on it... next few days I would blog on how we handle this issue... I am sure you would be here to read it. In case you have your contributions to our case, please don't hesitate to contribute... One of our inherent values is "Free discussion of Ideas" :)

P.S : Kari sorry for brining this up, and I think in my first post I missed a word that changed the statement, I corrected it.

P.S 2 : The big set of team mates are still great guys to work with, its just that they don't realize they are the future of leadership

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Nobody wants to be the Pizzaboy

Funny isnt it? You would ask Why would one want to be in first place? and anyway's what is a Pizza boy doing on this blog? So to drill it down.. Yesterday it rained heavily in Pune, started through the day and those heavy lashes of rains almost cleaned the city every few minutes... While the roads appeared as if a curfew was on, the leftover vehicles that dared to be on the roads could not avoid those bumpy rides saving way out of the potholes. While it was a necessity for some of us to be on roads, for almost 15 minutes on the road we raced a Pizza Delivery Boy who kept stealing the first position from us every 2 minutes and 2 blocks..

I wondered how this guy would keep himself motivated to rush through those traffic lights, rains, potholes above all he has to keep his delivery within 20 minutes or else the Pizza has to be delivered for free and that cost on missing goes directly from his pocket. No wonder not many wants to be that Pizza boy... for good or bad reasons.. the Pizza boy job is one hardship that doesn't pay of well.

Same thing applies to the development Teams.. there are one or maybe 2 Pizza boy's in every team.. these are those guys who own the product, do all the hard ship , maintain the quality of the product and are concerned about it. The hardship and effort of these development Pizza boy's is not just limited to maintaining the good worth of the product, but they also have to ensure that they help the other's in delivering on time, they have to make sure that they dont loose the time and the Pizza is delivered hot and to the hungry customer in time.

Wow... Now when you name hardships like this... who wants to be the Pizza Boy? Unfortunately the answer is not going to be soothing to anyone.. call on this and people would not hesitate to step back..

So how do we turn our Teams, into those Pizza boy who come right within time to deliver you the chilly hot pizza in time, when it is raining or you have loads of guests around? Lets find out.... we write a post following this to build the Pizza Boy Attitude....

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How to take your Idea to the next level?

Since we are doing so much talks around Innovation, Innovation Killers... thought it may make sense to put this one on as well... How to take your Idea to its right destination... Well this blog post is not the bible and may not be really fit it to your Idea or Innovation... but it will definitely give you pointers that will help you to do so....

This also comes with the fact that Raju (one of the dear readers) made the following comment on the blog around Innovation Killers...

When it comes to innovation killers, i would say the individual himself is the first killer. A viable seed will shatter even the hardest rock for survival. Problem is, "Innovation" is not considered as a means of survival unless we are pushed to corners with no options of 'conventional' survival methods.

I certainly agree with this fact.. many times this push to avoid Idea/Innovation comes from the Innovator himself. He waits, He is afraid, He doesn't want to risk, He doesn't care or he doesn't have time... So how does one really take his Idea from an Idea to Innovation? Or simply how do one take the Idea/Innovation to the next level....

1. Ideate / Document

Lot of Ideas die in the journey t takes from the thought itself to paper and then Implementation. The reasons are different... someone during the Adam-Eve era had an Idea of social networking.... it only took 1990's to build a Facebook. Wish those guys had documented the Idea.. they would have build something better by now ;) Not that FB is bad... but by the time it evolves it is going to take a few hundreds of years to make it perfect ;)

Well out of fun part.. the moment you get the Idea.. be it Shower or your bathroom or your bed or while you are doing some shitty work where you don't have ways to document... just pull a reminder and document your idea where you can remember it.

Before you take the next step to promote or share your Idea... make sure that you yourself become passionate about it... Keep the Idea hammer you..

1. have post its and posters around your house and room so you can be reminded.

2. Talk to yourself about it , every time you get time alone.. don't worry what people call you when they see you speaking to yourself.. cause they are going to laugh at you now but later talk about you, when you become an Einstein.

3. Focus , Focus and hammer and hammer your Idea to yourself.

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.- Buddha

2. Share

Your Idea is a dead meat if it is not shared. The first step when you have some Idea in your mind is to share it.. with a small or large forum of people you like , trust. Sharing of Idea is the usual step that gets skipped out in process of Innovation... People fear there Idea will be stolen, or somebody else will take credit for it, or it will be mis used... Ideas are never stolen.. they only evolve....The fear of Idea getting stolen avoids the sharing of Ideas.. hence if you choose a forum that can be your parents, spouse, close friends, Team members that you trust on would be the right way to get feedback...

Every brain that listens to your Idea and speaks a word about it either as a feedback or as a critic is a value add to the Idea..

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats - Howard Aiken

3. Brainstorm

Just sharing the Idea is not enough. It has to be brainstormed. Pros and cons, Issues and uses, UVP(Unique Value Proposition) of the Idea needs to be brainstormed.. Unless this is done the Idea will never take a good shape. This brainstorming can be done with the same group that you shared the Idea or even slightly bigger forum. One or few brainstorming sessions on your Idea can make that Idea one Killer Idea.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas - George Bernard Shaw

4. Find the right Sponsor

Whats the use of having a great Idea, if you don't find the right sources to get it to its destination. If you have a great Idea find your Manager, Team member, colleague or even Yourself. This person is the person who would help you succeed with the Idea. He is the one who is going to invest in your Idea. If you have an Idea about building a Software , or a Feature in your current software.. discuss it with your Product Owner, Manager and get some resource for it. If it is process driven find your Team , colleagues who would help you implement it.. if it is a individual task find free time for yourself so you can have time to implement what you want to Ideate.

A sponsor-less Idea is difficult to get through... find the right people who would finally put there bucks on your Idea..

The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time - Henry Ford

5. Know when to quit

Ideas can be so addictive and mind controlling that they dont let you fail.. the passion towards that Idea never lets you go away from it and the thought that success is next block will keep you going... this is a good sign of passionate behaviour. But if you want to succeed in a right way then you should define on when to stop your effort on your Idea.

A developer wanted to build a framework, he went to the Product Team demanded that he wants to spend his initiative on such framework. The Product team gave him 3 months. Few months post the initial time lines he had planned he was not able to deliver it, he became so passionate and defensive about it that he would not get off it.. Eventually the Team started taking it as a issue and finally decided to call it a quit as similar frameworks in market had already erupted and they would have helped the product without doing any inhouse work.

One has to decide the right time to call it a quit if the Idea is not triggered well... because all things dont end like the Fool's Gold.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along! - Arthur Clarke

6. Keep it Alive

If the mother of the child doesnt trust the child, no one would ever... Trust your Idea. Work on it. Keep it alive if it is getting delayed, Keep it alive , Give it oxygen and blood. No matter what happens no matter even if your Idea fails to launch, Even if you have to stop in the middle , even if it has failed to convince other, even if it has failed... Keep it alive.. Evolve it and make a better launchpad for it.

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You dont have license to Innovate

So while in the past few days we are talking about Innovation and ways to build culture's to Innovate.. we left out one important point "Blocking Innovation". While those passionate souls bring Ideas and are keen to Innovate, there are bunch of evil souls that stop them from doing it... this block doesn't come for a reason.. some times it is for Jealousy, Unawareness, Non Risk taking approach , Willingness, No passion towards goal.. above all self ability...

So lets list down the way people deny Innovation in teams, organizations...

Ask for it, Document it, What next?

A lot of cultures ask people to throw ideas, when these ideas start flowing through.. the Innovation Managers do not know how to manage them. Ofcourse when you get bombarded with 10's and 20's of ideas you would not know how to map it to your Product Vision... then you wiki it and there is no way in future to extract it and implement it.

Many times this goes to another level.. a lot of people do not know how to validate if these ideas are good or not.. When they do.. they do not know how to approach it to a destination.

How to solve this ?
Build a process to list down ideas, form a way to evaluate and validate them. Every idea listed needs to be categorized and find a way to delegate this to the right authorities and people who are empowered to help this goal succeed.

Dig the well when you are thirsty

A lot of times you would see requests for Innovation coming when your product is in bad shape, sales are not doing well or things are not going well all together.. All of a sudden you reach office and you would see that all Sr. Managers standing in the work area with all the office walls loaded with Innovation posters and all of them demanding Innovation from the Team in the next quarter...

A while back a friend worked for a company who was building a Travel portal. The business was dripping down in a span of 1 year.. everyone in the Team was asking the decision makers to reform the model, the decision makers chose however to increase inventory instead of increasing effort on SEO, building semantic web product etc... All of a sudden when the business hit the ground.. the management decided to re-engineer the product and the marketing strategy.. Result it was too late to build it back as other players were already running fast with their models.

How to solve this?
Regular evaluation of Innovation in the Team. Form brainstorming groups, create channels to ideate. Bring decision makers with right stats on Innovation Quotient.

Cant afford to fail now

A big bunch of stake holders and decision makers do not want to risk anything not with the figures, business, product thus the risk analysis Teams are formed and these teams do not let Innovation happen. Risk taking abilities and commitment to succeed drives Innovation away.

Resistance to change

Some people just dont want to change. Any new thing in the process is a threat, a problem, an issue and a potential problem. Hence you would find Innovation dying everyday where people are allergic to change.

If it has to happen, It will Happen

A lot of time people just dont want to initiate it. The thought behind is let things go as they are going .. it will happen. This attitude of lay back causes Innovation to die even before it is born.

Just block it
Why do things when they are working fine? Why introduce new things when every thing is good? Wonder what happens?

Budgets, Figures
Extra investment is what gets your profits down. If it can be done by the same people who are already in or even less, then Innovate. I am sure this is something you have been hearing very often. Budgets, dollars and figures always put Innovation on back seat.

Ownership?
Idea created, assigned to someone in Technology further there is nothing. Innovation dies if no ownership exists. I worked in the company where the Sales Manager would bring several small ideas every day to the Team, however there was no ownership in guidance on how , what , when and where... Taj Mahal was never built by the labourers... there was a vision and ownership.

Excessive Pressure

Excessive pressure to deliver always cause Innovation to fail. If your teams are in tremendous pressure to achieve the routine goals of the Team.. Innovation cannot happen when the mind is full with thoughts of survival.

Innovation Teams?

Managements form Innovation teams , dedicated teams to handle Innovations in the organization.. this is a good thought theoretically, but practically it can turn a killer in way to Innovate... Either these teams take monopoly on Innovation.. thus removing the group part of Innovation Or the others in the company start relying ONLY on these Innovation teams.

Now if you are coming across such lame excuses , reasons that stop Innovation in your Teams... wake up, Invest and Build the Culture to Innovate!!!

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Make your Team Innovative, but wait invest first!!!

After my post yesterday on Independence - A way to empower a colleague over a chat asked me..."Do you think Independence only will lead to new Ideas, Innovations?" The answer I am very sure about.. "NO". I believe Independence is a vehicle that you give to your Team to reach the milestones faster.. how they drive it, how they handle speed and consequences is built using a culture... We all call it Company Culture that's one thing that drives Innovation... Some say that cultures with freedom and Independence drive Innovation, I disagree.. even red carpet company cultures can drive strong Innovation...

A few years ago I worked with a company where I was not supposed to access any social networking web site, however I was building one... The Team of 15 developers was building something that they could not compare with the competition.... quite a few developers raised this issue, they were blocked to use chat tools, social sites, forums and god knows what not.. I only realised how Innovative people can be in such red carpet zones, when I found that they have figured a way to proxy requests using a custom made java app... only in a few years of time that type of product became one loved by red carpet companies, people called web routing.

So how does one build this culture so people can innovate? Well its an investment, and if you need to reap the benefits of Innovation and Innovative teams you need to sow the seeds of investment first....

1. Encourage your Teams to interact more, if they aint doing it, Ask them to do it.

2. Remove the fear, The fear of failure or complexity is a killer. Kills anything on its way.. let them wander freely...

3. Celebrate failure, Learn how to fail. If you do so, you would be able to find the reasons of failures and improve..

4. Encourage people to get off their desks, meet informally. If you think that is not working out well... organize small events in office where they can be fun and casual.

5. Think long term. Your Innovation is not finished in next quarter. Tell them that you are looking for beyond future

6. Involve as many people as you can, when you share Ideas and innovations... more the people, more the benefits.

7. Learn and encourage the art of brainstorming. Train them to jump into conversations, debates

8. Find ways to learn and share the learning's.

9. Find problems, Share problems, find ways to work out... make them work.

10. Reward both individual and groups. Innovate Innovation heroes

11. Remove blockages that stop people from communicating , innovating.

12. Train them to think above growth, money and success

13. Learn to say " I failed". learn to say "No" . Learn to say "I will"

14. Ensure that they understand that only thing secretive at workplace is "Agatha Christie's novel kept in the library"

A few things that you can start with to foster a Innovation culture or as well build a company culture to Innovate...

Remember to make Best Products , best processes , Best People... you need to invest first!!!!!

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Stop fitting pieces, You may break!

Of the busy work schedules I took my time off to meet the old time friend @aranhas007, he had been off lately very busy with doing some product development and we discussed on some cool ideas. One of the stuff we ended up debating on was FourSquare v/s Facebook Places.. yes the location driven services.. the question came in where we asked "Do fitting successful pieces into a product succeed?" I doubt looking at what Google tried in the last few years through Wave , Orkut and Buzz... it doesn't seem that you can club successful pieces and make one big hell of a product.

A serious given thought reminds me that whoever tried to do such thing never succeeded in making it big.. for various reasons... A lot of people think that cloning or replicating or milking a small idea is an easier thing to do, because all you got to do then is follow a model and execute... sigh!!!! if that had worked I would have read a biography of a few legends and would have by now qualified to become a Noble prize winner. Well cloning failures not only applies to product but also companies and their models...

A few days ago I heard a few comments while discussing organizational cultures, comments like

"In X company one is allowed to do this, that and this. Why don't we learn from them "

"People in X company get Y and Z, and they can also do X"

"Why not take good parts of Google, Microsoft and become one great company?"

Well that doesn't work. Does it? Steve Jobs when doing any announcements to his product family would wear the regular turtle neck with his denim, while Microsoft CEO would be in a suit...

Now can you make a Steve Jobs wear a suit on the launch and get a Windows out?

Well no its a different culture, model and process... you cant just fit 2 odd things together.. even though some law say that "Opposite poles match"

So why does this bringing together small pieces not really work?

1. Models are different

If the models and types of products are different, they ain't going to let you succeed instead they are going to add up to the Technical and maintenance liability. For instance just because the location driven services are hot, you cannot buy one service or build one to your product that is purely a non-content product!!.

Business, Development and Product Models define the vision and future and they cant be built in pieces from various successful models.. they have to be unique in order to succeed. A NON - REPLICA in other words...

2. Size

Size of the user base, company , executors affect the ability to join pieces. A smaller company or Team will find it easier to adapt to building or fitting in multiple pieces as opposed to a larger one. It does matter when it comes to adapting and executing with results when the time between former and later is too short.

3. Culture

This is a driver. Try making a few traditional SDLC developers execute a lean process. You will find resistance. The culture to adapt change is key. If this culture exists and prevails in your system it is possible to achieve some level of success in fitting in pieces. The culture to build, FAIL, and Change need to exists and most of the time some of these do not. People who have been able to join pieces of successful models and succeed, have a great culture that is blended with ability to FAIL, LEARN and CHANGE.

4. People

Finally , you can replicate products, ideas, tools , processes.... what made all these are the people.. and it is not easy to replicate them.

Now if you are thinking that you may pull a Agile + Waterfall + Six Sigma to build a very strong process for your company.. you maybe wrong.

If you are thinking that you will bring a twitter and a Youtube together to build a new realtime streaming product, You maybe wrong.

If you are thinking to bring Senior Managers from 10 different companies to make your company successful. You maybe wrong.

You maybe able to utilise small pieces to build one good thing, but you cant just pull a great future out of it. It has to evolve and evolve and become one unique thing to succeed.

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Nandan Nilekani's first day in Parliament - Of Culture's and Dress Code

I read this today after some of my friends tweeted around it that said Nandan Nilekani's first day in parliament... For those of you who are unaware of who this person is and why he is on my post please refer here , here and here...

The whole post is nice for some reasons and not very inspiring to me for others.. A Technocrat when travels to be a Cabinet Minister it inspires me on my way to get into politics sometime in my life… if not for changing the world at least helping my hand in changing India.. What disturbed me in the post is listed below as mentioned in the write-up:

“It was Minister of Textiles who had a comment to make before the next point on the agenda. He made a request that I should be attired in a more austere way instead of a flashy suit. It did not go well with the image of a minister who should live to serve the common man and should be less ostentatious in his habits. I stood up to reply. I offered my apologies to the Honourable Minister and assured that I shall be in a more acceptable dress next time. I felt that he was right. We also used to have corporate dress code in Infosys. So it's here as well!!!! I sat down and felt somebody nudging me. I turned around and to my surprise; it was the former Indian skipper and one of my favorite batsman Mohd. Azharuddin. I remembered that he had recently won the elections. I smiled at him and mentioned to him that I used to like his game very much, shaking his hand. No Rolex, I noticed. Azhar told me that he would “fix” me an appointment with an Italian designer who had designed his dapper Kurta suit. An Italian designer in Milan doing Kurtas!!!!! I made a note of this and reminded myself to give this example to Friedman for his next book,” The World Markets are flattened”.

Though I would treat “attired in a more austere way instead of a flashy suit” to be as attired in a less flashy suit… How many of Indians do think that if a politician is wearing a Khadi, he is as genuine as Gandhiji? Or how many of Indians feel that being a politician you are working for improvement of lower class only? OK forget what others think and feel… As self do you think if you don’t wear attire that suite what our minister called “austere” you would do less? And then have the dress that is designed by some famous designer for money that can be used to feed hundreds of poor Indians for a few years? Amazing isn’t it? Anyways my point is not to criticize what Mr. Nilekani wrote…instead to point the RULE that asks people to wear specific attire for reasons “unreasonable”

Dress Code’s… I think they are nice to have but to determine the minimum code rules that need to be followed with dressing in different places… I would imagine a dress code to be followed when you represent your company, organization or country with those extended others who you call clients, customers, vendors, diplomats or other nation’s representatives… You need to be wearing reasonable attire that can keep up to the reputation of your organization. Does enforcing dress code means that people really refer to the dress code and the moral behind it? BTW what is the exact reason to have dress code? I know that in some BPO’s and companies’ people are asked to be “Formally dressed” which means that a formal attire that doesn’t say that you are partying while at office or you just returned back from a disco.

There was a lot of fiasco when Sania Mirza and another tennis player wore casuals in the Beijing Olympics parade … read more about it here and people crumbled and cribbed about culture and attire ethics not followed… but what if somebody chooses to follow the dress code and find runaways to the clauses? Eventually Mandira Bedi Saree controversy cannot be easily forgotten… read here …

So over and over.. here is my view on dress code’s
Dress code’s needs to be event based.
Dress code need to determine what you cannot wear and not what you should wear.
Dress code should be based on profession and the type of work people do.
Dress code should be not to enforce people to buy new things or wear things they are not comfortable with.
In other words
Dress code should be replaced with a plain guideline to not be very casually dressed and leave the mature people who represent our teams, organization, cultures, states and nations to decide what best attire can represent it.

Your views….

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Are Cultural issues killing your Business ??? - Part 2

We discussed in yesterdays post What Are some of the Cultural Issues that can kill your Teams today we speak about how to be prepared to handle these issues.. A lot of time we are unaware of cultural issues others we ignore them.. in spite of having global teams and knowing the global impact we intend to intentionally or unintentionally ignore or avoid handling this issue.. A Cultural Quotient in Managers can definitely help this cause.. Now how to build this cultural quotient... and what is this cultural quotient?


What is Cultural Quotient?
Awareness of cultural differences, not by theory but by experience in working into different cultures is what is a unit of cultural quotient. Knowing what are the differences and barriers in different cultures is the CQ. We cannot just build it or buy it.. We cannot just train our people and get it implemented.. I am sure if we would then again we would not have any issues.. and businesses running without visible issues are no more businesses.

CQ can be built in different people but with time and enough training , exposure and above all awareness. Long back when BPO/Call centers were a big hype in India.. all Business Processes from various parts of the world were outsourced to India.. and to make it effective Language and Accent trainers were introduced to the calling agents.. people on calls from India got American names, they were trained with American accents and so on.. did it help? for a while it did.. but the mass was involved attrition, switching roles and jobs couldn't let companies handle this training as they should have... Then came in house training division and tests.. people were trained by companies own people , had to run through tests before they got into projects... yet.. did the accents and utilization of language change? Not really.. see below :

You may still hear on phones words like "Arey" , "na?" , "listen na" blah blah... Conclusion is just training is not helping.. there is something beyond that....

How to help us build it?

How to handle a cultural awareness is by way of :

1. Introduce people to cultures ...
2. Have them stay over the different locations for short , mid and long term
3. Train a bunch of them there and then let them go back and train the rest.
4. Imbibe cultural events to let them know the importance of various cultures... so Easter or Diwali or Hanukkah is just not a holiday but more.. or Presidents Day or Revolution Day or Republic day is beyond a day off at work.
5. Always ensure cross cultured people mingle
6. Get together of families when in different culture can give a good insight.. specially when you are invited for a Dinner for instance...


There are many other ways.. but remember, you cannot just get 50 people in a training room , teach them what people do in different nations and regions and build a CQ for them. Steps would be for individuals and Managers to list down:
1. Top few cultural elements of different cultures there Teams are based in
2. Start events that expose cultures , smaller ones that can involve smaller groups and let the word spread through.
3. Have shared collaborations places, blogs and intranet portals list down the celebrations..
4. if you are on a farther side make sure you do enough research before you get involved.
5. As managers its your job to allocate time to such events that can help build a proximity.


From a Professional Standpoint:
1. Make sure there are clearer roles defined for each of the member of cross cultural Teams
2. Ensure that the Objectives are set well
3. Success and Failure criteria are defined
4. Encourage involvement in decision making
5. Encourage co-ordination , Ideas sharing and other things that can help Teams build more confidence.
6. Introduce cross tasks so that such people can interact and know each other
7. let the blame game never come into picture, because that is something that can kill.

What else? How do we bring Cultural Difference to Normality , so that we can surpass the productivity levels?

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Employees makes Brands and Cultures not Management

I happened to visit Planet Ford office at Pune for the regular servicing of my car eventually when everyone coming to me started asking Me for and about the car I felt to be like GOD and why not this is what makes you believe that there are people who still think Customers are God. When I peeped around I realised that the employee who had joined just a day ago was also behaving the same way the most senior person in the Team... Wow is this what is called culture? is this how you make a brand? Well the answer is Yes....

The culture is made by the employees and not Management, when a culture prevails it does so only because the employees are enagaged to prevail it through... They are the ones who build it and they are the ones who flow it horizontal and vertical.... The reason why I say that Management does not play a part here is I have seen several service shops where employees work hard or do their jobs right only when the Boss is around... talking to such bosses or owners or managers I get to feel that such bosses know how to be focussed towards quality and services but dont know how to enroute the same to their Teams....

So when I see several smiling faces around ready to serve the most arrogant customers with the best of their smiles and attitude in the car Service Station it makes me believe that the best cultures can only be run by employees....

Are you all set to kick off the best cultures in your Team? I am up for it....

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