Marry your blog first!!!

Kari and me discussed a day ago on how to manage time to maintain the blog. I realize that yes it indeed is.. very very difficult to manage time to keep the spirit and the blog updated. But in the end it is your commitment towards your blog that defines and shows how much you value it and how much time you spend with it. While I am in a humorous mood these days and also am understanding the dynamics of great relationships.. I thought it will be easier to put blogs and relationships together...

Commitment

So the Seth Godin's , Arrington's and Om Malik's are those names in the Internet world who have married to there blogs.. and believe me they are very successful marriages. These are the guys who take blogging like marriage and blogs as their wives, result? you see quality post, medley gaps, but a very successful venture.. In Internet world a lot of people call these people Professional blogger.

So what is it that keeps this marriage going?

Comments

They are like those romantic moments of a married life, more the comments more the motivation, more the affection more the love. Of course you improvise on your marriage every time by putting efforts. Your coming home early, you buying gifts, those candle light dinners, those weekend outings and the cuddling post sex is what keeps the romantic momentum up. Similarly quality of posts, guest posts, accurate and timely information results in more and more interaction.... result ?

Visitors

Visitors on your blog is like the time you spend with your spouse in marriage... the more the better. Every second spent on your marriage spouse increases the bonding, helps you strengthen the bonding and of course results in a successful marriage...

Satisfaction

Well marriage is about satisfaction... some times you may not have everything going great, things would be bad , relationship strained.. but in the end its the satisfaction of having someone who loves you and waits for you, cares about you. Blogging is similar... sometimes you write for your satisfaction, people may not look at it, not read it, not like it ... but you care for your blog because you value it... the satisfaction of having something of your own keeps you going...

Well there are many other things that let these successful marriages of blogs reach heights... but lets also talk about those things that try to break your marriages...

So what stops you from keeping your blog up?

Many Wives dont work

2 blogs? 3 blogs? well its a disaster.. like you cant have many wives at once, you cant control multiple blogs at once.. though they stay on your input, they are very demanding... have a blog with 100 visitors, stop blogging within a very short span of time you would fine the page views and visitors going down... You have to spend time time on the looks of the blogs , structures, posts etc etc.. this demands a lot of time.. so while wives require lot of money (kidding), blogs need time... think of duplicating this and imagine the pain!!!!!

Affairs kill them

A lot of people who cannot hold on to their blogs is the reason of there involvement with various things... Social networks, chat tools, micro blogging sites and many other things...

I call Twitter as the glossy girl friend that gives the pleasure of marriage, but not the perks of it.. so if you see blogger turning twitterer's understand that they have fallen to the lucrative looking glamour of twitter. (I still advocate it ;))

Future - Kids, Money

One sign of successful marriage is future, kids.. A successful blog results in goodwill. The Arringtons and Scoble's started there blogging careers and are Internet celebs.. A lot of other blogger have turned not only in celebs but also do there living on it...

Now that we have known a bit about relationships and blogs with the limited wit and humour I have... lets find ways to keep our blogs running and let people learn from our experiences, share knowledge , enlighten people and succeed together.

For those of you who are still bachelor's in life... Go Marry your blog and be committed to it...I just want to say one thing... I Love Blogging

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Appraisal and Performance Criteria

I must have got at least a few stares and a few comments from friends that the post around How to handle Bad Appraisal was a employer perspective and very little thought was given for how one feels like when the appraisal goes wrong.

I felt it was not a employer perspective, instead it was a perspective on how one should cope up with such situation no matter what you are employee or employer... anyways, since I deal with development Teams more closely .. I also got a question that said that usually the Key Result areas or the performance evaluation critieria's are not made very clear, bench marks are not set , there are no clear definition of success and fail parameters and thus when it comes to appraisal time the developer / engineer thinks that he was the best and did the best and the Manager thinks that there was good work done, but there are a lot of things that did not go well.... So here I thought I would put together a few questions that can be used as indicators to one's performance . These questions would help define cleared goals and/or also in turn help a better appraisal process....

1. Attitude

Q. How does he/she perceive his/her job?

Q. How does he/she perceives he/she role in the Team?

Q. Do he/she stand by the Team, helping them on issues and small troubles?

Q. Do he/she needs to be called for help? or he/she walks by to help others?

Q. How does he/she take change?

Q. How does he/she work in absurd condition? tight deadline and power outages or urgent work needed to be solved but machine is slow, or long hours and so on.

Q. For a failed commitment how does he/she react? Blame on others, things, accepting mistakes, or retrospecting to improve?

2. Understanding

Q. How well does he/she understand the requirement and makes other understand it?

Q. How well does he/she adapt to the project and helps other adapt?

Q. How much of self time is spent on exploring the requirements?

Q. How much of value does he/she add to the Project?

Q. How many challenges or questions are raised by he/she

Q. How much depth is the understanding? like a high level feature understanding or a detailed scope?

3. Communication

Q. How does he/she communicate with the Teams.

Q. How frequently does he/she update about the actual progress to others?

Q. How much time is spent by him/her on the interactions related to project tasks with the Team?

Q. How well the person says YES or NO?

Q. How well does he/she explain the reason to those YES and NO

4. Reaction

Q. How does he/she react to a changed requirement at the last moment?

Q. How does he/she reacts when he/she is not center of attraction?

Q. How does he/she react to immediate and drastic change?

Q. How does he/she react to negative changes?

Q. How much of cribbing, whining, crying does he/she get past a task he/she is not supposed to do?

5. Skills

Q. How fast does he/she do his/her work?

Q. Are the core competencies utilized best?

Q. what are his/her best skills? Does he/she improvise on them?

Q. Does he/she document what and how he/she is going to do the task?

Q. Does he/she demonstrate frequent and consistent improvement?

Q. Does he/she actually do things instead of just talking about them?

6. Quality

Q. Is the quality of work done good?

Q. How many iterations happen when he/she does some work like estimation? Plans etc?

Q. How many bugs are created on the work done by him/her?

Q. How much of re-engineering and rework has been done on the task done by him/her?

Q. How much self initiatives are driven by him/her in improving the quality of the product?

Q. How many bugs are caught during the testing, by the customers, by him/her self?

7. Organization

Q. How does he/she manager his/her time?

Q. is he/she planned and organized?

Q. How is his/her desk kept? clean, dirty?

Q. How well does he/she plan the meetings and other times?

Q. Are the estimates given by him/her met? if not why?

8. Ownership

Q. Does he/she care about the module and takes he/she is doing?

Q. Do he/she take responsibility and show authority on his/her task?

Q. Is he/she passionate about what they are doing?

Well these are just those few questions that you as a Manager needs to ask yourself when you are putting someone on a performance appraisal. Pull these questions, customize it to your Team and let them answer these for themselves.. Your development Team's may get the best answers for themselves... Keep a lot of scope for project or release driven retrospectives as they are the best indicators of how one did...

In the end remember this is just one way to know what improvements you need to pull over for your Team instead of having a discussion "I did everything you asked me for, now why is it a bad appraisal?" or "You did OK , but not great"

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I really dont want to be a Millionaire PERIOD

Surprised? Well don't be... When I say it, I mean it.. I am sure you would agree if you have to face what Me and a few of my friends and colleagues had to ...

I begin my Monday morning with the usual blues and greens and reds.. between checking mails and handling those alerting troubles, I get my phone vibrating around (I keep my phone on silent mode always) . It vibrates for a while and finishes and I happen to check it only after a few missed calls.. all dialled from the same number... Usually I am not very courteous but I decide to call back... Bingo and the Disaster stuck....

The Phone rings for a while, before it is picked up by some lady who keeps me on hold for 2 minutes and without covering the headset keeps chatting with the next door agent (I assume it was a call centre).. I am not putting in the details now as I am sure you have had enough laughs watching "Outsourced" , "Mumbai Calling" and of course reading all those funny call centre stories over Internet and Chetan Bhagat's.....

So after a few minutes of wait, I am transferred to a lady with a husky voice.. Huh? These days you can take all the pleasures over voices.. specially when those voices are dusky and husky it feels like a glass of whisky...The lady in the other side whom I am now going to call "The Miracle Woman" (since she is going to change my life by all those virtual Miracles) I hear

"Sir, Congratulations... I am XXX calling from XXX bank and I am calling to change your life and make you a millionaire"

I never heard this line before.. so I was taken back by curiosity...

Me : What is it?

Miracle Woman : You are chosen by our bank and are offered a Lifetime free credit card "

Me : Wow.. Thank you very much. But I am not interested and I am busy too.

Miracle Woman : Sir, This offer is one of its kind and you don't have to pay anything for your lifetime, above all it has XXX facility , you get a 55 days interest free period, blah blah blah

Me : I am Sorry. But I am not interested.

Miracle Woman : But if I tell you some more details I am very sure you would want this card desperately.

Me : (With all the curiosity ) Is it? And what would that be?

Miracle Woman : With this card you will also get a addon card that too life time free, a cash back on every purchase anywhere, discounts, points that can be redeemed with several gadgets etc.

Me : See its lucrative, but I already have a card and I am happy with it.

Miracle Woman : That is excellent. If you have one you would not need to submit any documents, I would just need your last months statement and a print of your card. This card is given to only VIP's and having it will enable to you to access some 5star hotels in various cities.

Me : I get indebted with all these cards, enforces me to use it and go in debt. So I am sorry I wouldn't want it.

Miracle Woman : Don't worry Sir.. we also have our Bank offers and we can extend you a personal loan of up to 20 lakh rupees (2 million INR I guess?). You will be a millionaire and a very special customer to us. We also offer Auto loans in case you want to buy luxury cars and for special category cars like Benz and Audi and others we give more special discounts. We have home loans, Medical loans , Education loans.

Me : Woof.. So I take a credit card , and to pay my bills for those purchases I take a loan. Interesting. And you have one loan for everything?

Miracle Woman : This is a life time offer Sir, dont loose it. You may never get a chance to hold this VVIP card that only Bollywood celebs hold and above all be a Millionaire, buy a car , House, Have yur kids study abroad..

Me : Hmmm.. you making me a Millionaire madam.. and I only have to submit my last months credit card bill??? Thats so easy... But I am sorry I am not interested.

Miracle Woman : Well.. you loosing a great opportunity... but in case you need you can call us. I will call you next month to see if you have any other requirements...

Me : No, wait..

Dang!!!!... phone kept. I had no clue and I am surely going to wait for another call when my life is a mess on a Monday morning.

Anyways.. leaving the conversation.. when the entire world is shouting that there is a RECESSION, ECONOMY IS DOWN.. where are these banks getting money from to offer to Me and so many other people in this universe? If they have so much money and want to make each one of us a MILLIONAIRE, whey he hell do we have economic issues? Anyways.. I dont want to be a Millionaire like this... but wait, there are several such Miracle Women waiting to call you today or tomorrow and change your life, Make you a Millionaire...

Want to be one?

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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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