bheja shor karta hai

Moving to http://1on1.in

2011-09-09T10:03:00.000+05:30

Newer blog posts are on http://1on1.in as I try to set up a new venture.
See you there!

Creating collaborative Content

2009-10-27T16:16:00.001+05:30

I see this as a 3 step process

Step 1 - Establish the context
Step 2 - Do the research
Step 3 - Put the content together

So let us start with (the mindmap images look small and cramped, but if you click on them individually, it opens up to a crisper full screen image)

The research activity is in two parts
One - research the content.

Two, explore the possibilities and limits, of the pedagogic tools available.

We assume that the collaborative learning content would comprise of a slide deck and instruction notes. Other activities are embedded in the slide deck. And by now the slide deck and instruction notes are begging to be put into place :).

If for no other reason, then for the fact that we've waited so long to get to this. Compare this to the normal impulse of starting right here, at this step.

And hopefully, we are all done!

Comments? Feedback?

Net present value of an individual

2009-10-27T14:21:00.003+05:30

Prof Sheth mentioned that the NPV of an american child today is minus $250K. This includes the cost of putting him through college. Try as I may, I am unable to find anything further on this on google. But it led me to an even more interesting insight.

Urban drivers for larger family size are negative and immediate. The end result of moving from a village to a city is that your ideal family size shrinks to just above 2. This may have been double earlier.

By 2050, 80% of the world will be living in cities. Since 2008, more people already live in cities than outside them. While urban living will have its own challenges in the future - especially when coupled with climate refugees - there is good news on the population front.

World population may stablize and then taper off below 10 billion, by 2050, for the simple reason that 80% of world may be living in cities.

ps: Did you know that an american mom in 1800, likely had 7 children. Today it is less than 2.

my checklist for desgning learning modules

2009-10-23T09:42:00.004+05:30

What I know of instructional design, is what i have informally picked up. This is the checklist I presently use. Guide me on how to make it better please :)

Creating Sustainability Awareness

2009-10-23T09:40:00.003+05:30

Please click on the mindmap, to see a larger version!

Climbing out of the hole that 'tragedy of commons' dug!

2009-10-21T15:39:00.004+05:30

In case you are wondering, about what this hole is, here's a story for you.

Many hundreds of years ago, somewhere in central India, lived a king who ruled a small but peaceful kingdom. Things were going well, as they had always done, until all of a sudden and for no good reason, things stopped going so well.

There were fires in the central granary one month and the rains failed in the next. The farmers refused to pay their taxes and the princess eloped with the court astrologer. The townsfolk, in the capital city were faced with a fresh wave of crime and the public chariot services went on a strike. All this while grain prices were going up and you really had to struggle to make the ends meet. Get the picture?

The king realized that this called for emergency measures. He passed a decree that all the people living in the inner city were required to bring and pour a cup of milk each into the dry well located behind the palace, on the next 'amavasya' night. He had been advised that by thus offering milk to the goddess of the land - who dwelt in the temple, adjoining the well - the goddess would be happy and things would be fine after that. PS: Now you know why the princess eloped with the astrologer :)

On amavasya night, throughout the night, there was a stream of people walking to the dry well. Everyone brought a cup along and poured into the dry well, as he chanted the goddess' name. The king watched from his palace and smiled happily.

Next morning when the king went to the well, he found to his surprise that the well - instead of being full of milk, was instead full of water. Everyone of his subjects had taken advantage of the dark amavasya night and believing that others will be pouring milk, had himself taken the liberty of pouring in water.

This is the tragedy of commons too. Whether it is the overtaking motorist who causes the traffic jam or the finicky housewife who keeps her own house spotless but throws the garbage out into the vacant plot nearby, because everyone else is doing the same. The tragedy is the same. So what is the way out.

I was watching John Gerezema's TED talk on the - post crisis consumer in US of A and he talks about how the recession has brought about a change in consumer values that is perhaps for the better.

For one, the consumer now looks for value. Instead of mindlessly consuming.

For two, the consumer now looks for values. The company that brought him his goods can not be operating unethically or exploiting the system anymore. He perhaps sees the relationship between that and his current plight.

For three, the consumer is into durable living. It is not about use and throw. For the first time, the american consumer, now on an average, keeps his vehicle for more than 9 years. It is not about living beyond his means. For the first time, the american consumers are using more debit cards than credit cards.

But most interestingly, the consumer is into cooperative consumerism. Cooperative consumerism is about taking up relevant causes, by joining hands. In unity lies a strong voice. The voice that comes to be because people choose to be a community rather than a bunch of lone individuals. This is quiet a departure from the lone cowboy american.

In fact, the most amazing thing about the americans - atleast to me - is their ability to get down to earth, quickly again. Did I mention that 30% of all houseowners built their own houses this year?

Here is the aha! that struck me, from this cooperative consumerism.

Cooperative consumerism can extend into using peer pressure to measure the hole that 'tragedy of commons' has created. Not do anything about other than simply measure it and make it available. The collective would take care of the rest.

In the milk story, a lamp near the well would have ensured that the person pouring water into well would hesitate, because 3 people in the line behind him, would see him doing this.

Closer home, if you take the traffic example - If you broke the traffic line and a loud automated beep at the junction let you - and fellow sufferers - know that you had just jumped the line, chances are that you would not do it the next time. Not because you can not listen to the beep, but because others would listen to you, breaking the line and give you the look.

Similarly take the garbage throwing housewives example. If a vacant plot has become a garbage dump and the plot owner installed a proxmity sensor at the site, so that a buzzer would beep when someone approached the plot. A loud beep at the plot would signal to the neighbourhood - everytime a garbage thrower was at work. She would hesitate too!

So much, for the use of 'technology' to build solutions that can help fight tragedy of commons. Anything that will bring the transgressor into the eyes of his community. Photographic evidence is another way. Good old peer pressure, administered with the help of a community facilitator will work wonders too.

Essentially, what is needed, is a means of letting atleast a few others in the community know, whenever, a particular person breaks the desired norm.

What says you?

Some water facts - India

2009-10-20T16:20:00.002+05:30

From A 2007 report by the government, called the Trombay Symposium on Desalination and Water Use

water resource management “...is going to be the most serious problem that the country will be facing in the 21st century”
Climate change, already accounts for 20% increase in water scarcity with the remaining 80% being due to population increase and economic development resulting in water pollution.
Demand for fresh water by the industrial sector rose from 3% of availability in 1990 to 4% in 2000 and will be up to 11.5% in 2025. The share of irrigation demand is projected to decline from 84% in 2000 to 73% in 2025

From A planning commission report

India’s annual precipitation is 4,000 trillion litres, of which only 1,869 trillion litres can be utilized. Of this, less than 1,123 million litres is used.
Groundwater, which accounts for 433 million litres, contributes 70-80% of the water used in farms, about four-fifths of the domestic water supply in rural areas and about 50% of water used in urban areas and by industry

The 'Repair' thread - E Learning for sustainability

2009-10-20T14:39:00.004+05:30

Remember an ancient era when

spectacles, if broken, could be repaired
transistors and radios, if broken, could be repaired
trousers and coats, if torn, could be repaired
pens, books, cane chairs, shoes were all repaired, when the need arose. A friend - in campus interviews - claimed that his hobby was 'book binding' and impressed the codgers from DCM
if Cell phones, DVD Players, Washing Machines or LCD TVs would have been around - they would have been repaired too. Unless ofcourse their manufacturers had designed them in such a way, that they should NOT be repaired (That is a separate post).

In the last 20 years, repair has become unfashionable. It suits manufacturers to encourage throwing, because they can then sell more. Brand is fashionable. Reuse is not.

One of the best ways of fighting overt consumerism and 'planned obsolesence' is to repair things, when they can be repaired. And in addition - To find new owners for repaired goods if need be.

The thought here is to host several eLearning threads, that teaches people how to repair things. Either as a vocation or as a hobby.

Making needed parts and needed new owners available along with way, if required.

What do you say?

What is a 3 quarters manager?

2009-10-20T13:52:00.003+05:30

If you are looking for a hint, before you answer, this category was earlier called, 'caring manager'.

The assumption was that in a work setting, a caring manager can make a positive difference towards sustainability.

A caring manager would

nuruture and grow her team, rather than only 'consuming' it for the task on hand
think of consequences, not only from the head but from the heart. The latter is always a more reliable place :)
would take action, that would make a difference.

All these are right. A caring manager would help her team act in a more sustainable way, thus.

Read on see the reasons why this category is now called, '3 quarters manager'

A caring manager may still not have longer time perspective in mind, while deciding things. Assuming that a regular manager only thinks from quarter to quarter, a 3 quarters manager would think far out into the horizon. 9 months is almost as much time as nature takes to incubate a baby. 9 months to incubate an idea and think through its implications. We could get really fancy on management with this. If you are naive enough to believe that CEOs actually think 5 or 10 years into the future as their day job - then we would not be needing skills for sustainability. Would we?

A caring manager could still be a manager who lives in a virtual world, where actual tangible action is for doers down the totem pole. A 'pure manager' can be a big threat to sustainability beacuse what they want to drive, is sometimes removed from reality. 3 quarters manager implies that the person is 1 quarter doer. Still leaving some scope for sanity!

You may start with a caring manager. She may still do damage inspite of her best intentions. But after 3 quarters (of a decent bottle of whisky) you can be reasonably sure that most managers will not be in too much of a position to create any real damage. This is therefore a tribute to the style of '3 quarters management'.

So for all these wonderful reasons, this category is now called, '3 quarters manager'

Organizing my eSpace

2009-10-20T10:09:00.005+05:30

Tags I want to start using in my blog

Relating to 'what' of the sustainability skill

3 quarters manager (was caring manager)
community facilitator (was community manager)
solution architect (was solution builder)
story teller
social entrepreneur

Relating to 'how' of teaching the sustainability skill

an activity
an expert opinion

a fact

a joke

What else?

Learning to learn better

2009-10-09T11:05:00.007+05:30

Abhijit who has joined us recently as Chief Learning Officer, twittered about LEARNING STYLE online questionnaire.

I went and checked out mine and then looked at Prof Felder's site for details about the styles

I have a strong preference for reflective learning (+7) rather than the active way. I can understand those walks that I take now :)
I have a VERY strong preference for the intuitive style gathering inputs (+11) rather than sensing. What else do you expect from an INFP?
Visual (+7) wins over Verbal for me. But I have some reservations about this one. Given the commute to electronic city and the number of audiobooks that I have managed to listen to, I am not doing too badly on the verbal front i guess
As if there were no skews upto now, I have a +11 on Global style of learning over Sequential. Just show me the big picture and let someone else take care of the details. I seem to be saying!

So i was wondering whether you get these extreme scores, as you become older and a more balanced score when you are a younger learner? Old dogs do get set in their ways you know!

Anyways, welcome Abhijit, to the madhouse. :)

PS: As we build material for the sustainability academy, this has implications for instructional design, that I am sure the professional content creators all know, but I felt i should remind myself with.

Especially those things that I would NOT naturally do (given my own skewed learning style).

Reminder #1 - To help the active learners, I will build in more group discussion and participatory work. Also ensure there are 'doable actions' in every module

Reminder #2 - To help sensing style information gatherers - I will put in more facts. Will give cookbook approaches where needed. Will give the real world context. This is *the* improvement area for me. Especially about the facts.

Reminder #3 - Build both show and tell irrespective of whether it is ILT or eLearning.

Reminder #4 - Give the logic or rationale clearly. Link sequential steps to Cookbooks (of R#2). This will help the sequential learners.

.

pdf is my format of choice, for digital content

2009-05-17T21:06:00.001+05:30

I wanted to work with powerpoint format, but make the slides explanatory with additional text. This is easy enough to do when in the pure web space.

On the net, there is slideshare. Both slides and explanatory text are supported. On the net, there is picasaweb. I could upload the slides at png or jpg images and add the explanatory text as captions.

I also wanted to send my content over email. In a push sort of a way. I thought I can use flash. The text remains crisp even in large windows and the file size is *so* small. On the other hand it has the same limitation as .png or .jpg. The text and the search engine remain separated from each other.

Enter pdf. I can send as email. The search engine understands it. The size is not bad. I can mix in images. I can even make mindmaps without the text loosing its meaning.

The icing on the cake is, the pdf is readable on the berry too. If I was sending content to the berry, it would need to be mp4 or animated gifs - both with the corresponding bulk and lack of search engine reach.

Tomorrow as e-books come along, the pdf is only going to get stronger. So this convinced me, that if I am going beyond informal blog posts and making a 'learning nugget' then pdf should be vehicle of my choice.

getting things done

2009-05-17T12:55:00.006+05:30

Read - or rather heard in an audiobook - David Allen's 'Getting things done'.

He has good insights about

thinking through the outcome - right then and there - rather than the intent, as the action item. for him figuring out the outcome and then the 'next doable action' are mindset changes, that put you on the high road to getting things done.
while on the topic of 'next doable action' he also uses this as the basis of deciding where to park the actions. Actions with similar context are best done together. Candidate categories are

on net, on phone
in electronic city (or in sarjapur or in home)
with boss, with reports etc. --- As far as I am concerned, for now they all go into my 'file' folder in the mailbox.

he talks about using the tickler to flag future events
he talks about capturing all thoughts and mental luggage on a reliable external system. I would use a simple pocket diary whose pages I can tear off, after I 'process them'. the reverse side, 1st page is always the 'days actions'.

This is what I resolved I will do - to plan and act on the week. That is how I see my effectiveness emerging.

at the start of the week, I will plan the week. Plan atleast 30-40% of the week with proactive tasks I want to do.
I will try to think in terms of outcomes and 'next doable actions'. These I will 'file' (may subcategorize further to boss; team; desk (default); phone; net) on email.
if ideas or unprocessed thoughts occur to me, I will not keep them in my head. I will mark them to a pocket diary. preferably one thought per (small) page.
When I later have time, these - depending on the context - I will organize into (a) next filed doable actions, or (b) tickler in calendar, or (c) in outline - 'to write' (same categories as my blog's categories) - giving thought to outcome & next doable action, as I process it.
during the week, i will process to clear my 'file' and 'to write' files, as time permits. The 'file' would need to be empty. The 'to write' - as much as I can.
at the end of the week, i will ensure that I have processed my 'file' in mailbox
at the end of the week, i will ensure that my 'notes diary' in the pocket is empty with the ideas now sitting in one of the 3 places (file, to write or tickler).
i will also try out twitter. by keeping an online presence on an ongoing basis for 3 weeks and then decide what I want to do with it.
i will try out posting blog posts daily. starting the old habbit once again. the idea is to start assembling useful content for teaching. I will use the 'to write' outline as the starting point for these posts
everyday, I will exercise and I will meditate.

Dekhe, kyaa hota hai! :). If you have any suggestions and ideas on how to do this better - do guide me please! :)

solutions to help community managers collect funds

2009-01-08T12:23:00.003+05:30

Whenever informal groups come together to do something big enough, the question of funds also comes up. Money *is* needed even when everyone is willing to pitch in with their best effort.

This is usually the biggest stubling block also. People fear they may have to pay out of their pocket. Inspite of putting in the effort, they may end up paying more than their fair share because somebody else did not even bother. Worse still, someone may accuse them of not using funds collected, responsibly enough.

Money is needed. But money messes it up too. So what if an IT solution could simplify funds collection and management? It would help communities to be more effective and more could get done, with less effort.

Here are the well known options

On the web, we are used to paying with credit cards and in the general sense this includes debit cards too
Something like paypal works for small amounts, if you have a credit or a debit card attached. The good news is that you can transact, even if the actual card belongs to someone else in the family or a close friend.
If you don't have a credit card, you can transfer funds from your bank account to the desired account holder's account. However, not all banks can transfer to all other banks and you have to be online in the 1st place.
Usually at this stage, if any of the above options have not worked, you have to resort to making a check or a draft and handing it over physically. In today's heavy traffic and long commute times, it might still be useful to have access to a local courier who can collect/ deliver on your behalf. Example: from dtdc intracity you can have checks picked up from all those who said, they will be paying by check.
If check is also not practical, then it boils down to flipping open your wallet and handing over the currency notes, when you meet face to face.

In terms of ease of payment this list is probably in increasing order of trouble you have to take to transfer funds and in terms of security of payment, this is probably in decreasing order of safety of your overall funds.

We can look at enabling paypal and courier collection as solution related parts to this big picture. Paypal if you want to transfer funds electronically and local intra-city courier if you want to send the check across.

We can also add some kind of followup mechanism for those who are late with their payments and even some kind of 'let-us-now-shame-them' mechanism for those who are really forgetting to pay for a long time. It will also be useful to have an acknowledgement mechanism for those who paid in time and are still wondering if their funds reached safely through.

New mobile commerce applications and sites are also coming up and integrating them into the solution is well worth considering too. Here are the options I could quickly find. Do add to these and comment on the listed ones, by posting with your comments below.

from mcheck you can pay mobile bills, insurance premiums, purchase airtickets and movie tickets, from the convenience of your phone. They seem to be Mumbai based and if there is sufficient interest amongst solution builders, one can always speak to them (needs a card)
from oxicash you can pay prepaid mobile & TV recharges, bill payments, travel, online shopping, mobile videos, music, games and other utilities. Again they seem to be Delhi basd so with sufficient interest, can be reached. You do not need a card for an oxigen recharge but do need to go and pay cash at a convenience outlet (usually near you, as they take care of phone recharge for all the prepaid folks)

community managers are real people, with commitment

2009-01-08T10:34:00.002+05:30

If you wanted to be a community manager and were giving thought to how to go about being a successful one, you will probably not find much on the net yet.

This is a new role and everyone is still figuring out.

However it does seem clear that:

- a community manager will need to come across as a real person. Complete with short-comings, quirks and other assorted bugs. More so when online.

Compare the community manager to a moderator of an online forum or a list. The moderator's voice is a faceless one - always right and always powerful. You can live with what a moderator says but how often have you felt like replying back to a moderator, for the sake of interaction? A community manager - on the other hand - would cajole and seduce you into interacting with the community - on the net and on occasion face to face. Only a real person, who you can relate to, can make you do that.

- however I may earn my respect I still need to earn it, before I will get it from anyone.

Unless I am not committed to making the community work and – you particularly - a part of it, there is little chance that you will see me as a successful community manager. therefore it is so important that I be committed to making a community work.

My own motivation would need to be above board. Which means that if i do not believe in the cause of the community OR if i do not care enough sufficiently about the people involved, i should not even try to be a community manager.

These are the basics. Be real. Be committed.

These two are the fundamentals that must be in place. If I can be real and if I can be committed, it does not matter much what I particularly do to get the community going. It pretty much will!

Do you think I am on the right track with this rather simple list of capabilities for the community manager?

--
http://brijsethi.blogspot.com

community managers - a new role at work, for sustainability

2009-01-07T20:06:00.005+05:30

A community manager is someone who is able to form, sustain and leadinformal groups. Unlike a business or an office, where people report into someone and form a hierarchy, the informal group exists, because somepeople have informally chosen to be together.

They may be there for a common reason, or because they like each other or sometimes even because they have no other choice.

A community manager leads the informal group, not because someone had told him to do so. Not even because s/he wants to take charge and controleveryone towards her own nefarious means.

She simply does it because it is the right thing to do and if she or someone did not do it, then it would make the group much less effective.

She lead informal groups, towards end goals that are best decided by thegroup itself. She does so, while ensuring harmony, participation & fun. Asad group is hardly a group.

She uses both face to face & online tools. Today the power of internet andcomputers is available for doing many simple chores that can make aninformal group more effective.

Some of these tasks could be:

- Collecting commitment for something and/ or funds, from all or a part ofthe enrolled members
- Enrolling new members. Also managing the enrollment.
- Sending updates (posting on web/ email/ sms)
- Posting progress (similar to sending updates but also linked to drawingup plans - see below)
- Involving office bearers in a smaller but more intense group through theuse discussion groups or wikis
- Seeking expert advise, from elsewhere on the net
- Drawing up plans – both in terms of ongoing work & one time events
- Succession planning for the informal group leader because you yourselfmay only want to carry the load for so long.

Other tasks
- Connecting with like minded community managers

--
http://brijsethi.blogspot.com

From the heart

2009-01-03T14:26:00.004+05:30

my tears too

have their mind -

dear master

--
http://brijsethi.blogspot.com

the green android

2008-10-13T14:03:00.000+05:30

Remember 'Data' from Star Trek, TNG?

A very capable android, who depserately wanted to be human. To imitate
our foibles, our humor and even our tears. While Data wants to become
more human, we are caught up in becoming more mechanical, more efficient
and more emotion free. More computer-like, if you wish.

Today, the power of the computer is available to us, not only to be more
computer like, but also to be more human. The power to connect to each
other and to relate. The power to be spontaneous, as only humans can be.
The power to cherish a relationship, built over time.

You may be wondering what it has got to do with green and with business
opportunities?

The android has come full circle. It is now google's OS for mobile
handsets on an open platform. The API can be a starting point for
aspiring developers who will have access to a low cost (less than $100,
street), readily available, multi-vendor hardware platform that:

* has a low power consumption virtual machine
* in a mobile footprint, that fits in your pocket,
* running on a single charge for the whole day,
* and can not only communicate world-wide, using GSM and CDMA,
* but also interact locally, using bluetooth, for free.
* It facilitates user input from a touchscreen or a keyboard
* and can capture real time images - including those of your
retina or thumb print,
* in addition to being very location aware - thanks to GPS.

Yes, you can choose to see a mobile phone as 'always available machine
intelligence' to make our lives more interactive, with richer
relationships and creative possibilities. On October 22, 2008 - T-Mobile
will put the first mobile phone running Google supported Android OS in
the market. More are sure to follow.

The business opportunities come from the possibility that this can
reshape how we work and interact. We can take scores of existing
applications that were tied to desktops and laptops and open them up to
mobile users.

Quiet paradoxically, this is green because it can optimize travel and
even take away the need to travel in many situations. Saving precious
time. Saving energy.

Before we go to some specific scenarios that will open up, let us
generalize a little bit on the computer's ability to connect.
Essentially, it allows us to connect in 3 different ways.

* connect across physical distance to people - the phone call.
* connect across time to our own historical data - the desktop
search, the file system
* connect even when simultaneous access is relaxed - the
messenger, the sms, the email - in varying degrees.

We already have the means to connect in all these ways when we are at a
desk. But we are usually at a desk when we are working. When we are not
working we can be anywhere. But then these tools find it a little hard
to come along with us. Android will take care of that difficulty :)

We can call, search, instantly retrieve, chat, message and email on the
move. Now imagine we can also make payments, figure out exactly where we
are and prove our identity when required, with no additional effort.
Then we have the building blocks to be even more human, using the power
of IT, when on the move.

Surely, this is 'IT for green' using IT's ability to connect. Let us
dive into 3 case studies, before we conclude.

Case 1 - The greedy buyer

You go to a mall. you can see the deals available on your cellphone. You
can even see who amongst your friends (or friend's friends) are in the
vicinity. You go to a bookshop and find a book you like. Instead of
purchasing it you scan the barcode with the camera and search for a
better deal possible, finally arranging for the book to be delivered at
your doorstep in the evening. You have a coffee with a school friend you
found in the vicinity. Over coffee, you also arrange a cab to pick you
up at the mall's gate. You both then walk out, stopping on the way to
home, to pick up a packed lunch, that was a real steal-deal.

Case 2 - The greedy merchant

You run your own side business, working 3-4 hours a day on it. You have
regular customers in the locality. You are able to pick up their
shopping lists in the morning, consolidate and deliver after their
filling their orders from the wholesale market. On most days, you don't
even need to go to the market, as another local entrepreneur is doing
the chores for 6 of you, at the vegetable market. Some of your
customer's friends in the locality have heard about you too. They make
their shopping lists available too and you 'bid' on their lists too,
giving them a decent discount because additionally it costs much less to
fill their order. They make the trial purchase by accepting your bid
that day. In no time, they start swearing by you too. All because of
your android cellphone and trusted electric 3 wheeler. And ofcourse your
long term relationship skills :).

Case 3 - The ride stealer (chance pe danc'er)

You wait patiently at the cornerside, having already announced on the
car-pooling website your desire to travel to electronic-city today,
between 8:00 and 8:15 AM. You have indicated that you are willing to pay
Rs.30/- for the ride. A car stops by and an attractive looking stranger
smiles at you. Without a word, you both point your androids to each
other's eye. A match is made back at the website. No!, You are not
talking to an impersonator. Yes!, Your money will be accepted and the
ride given. Thank you! The money, incidentally, will be an electronic
transfer and you are delighted that the stranger has opted for this
payment to go to your favorite green NGO. You both get talking and get
to office as time simply flies because both of you are interested in
getting more cycling lanes built in the city. In fact, the android is
now the car-phone, connecting you to commuters in 3 other cars, who are
also having a similar chat, because you had scheduled it 10 days ago. Is
it work? Is it play?

Welcome to new possibilities. New ways of fun. New business
opportunities. Green Business Opportunities.

--
http://brijsethi.blogspot.com

He was the grand-daddy of us all!

2008-10-02T11:38:00.000+05:30

Pietermaritzburg is the capital and second largest city of the province of
Natal in South Africa. It was founded in 1838. Popularly called
Maritzburg, it is a major producer of aluminium as well as timber and
dairy products. It has a claim to fame.

Do you have visual recall from this scene ?

(May 1893, 9:00 PM, a moving train is approaching Maritzburg) –

The train reached Maritzburg, the capital of Natal, at about 9 p.m.
Beddings used to be provided at this station. A railway servant came and
asked me if I wanted one. 'No,' said I, 'I have one with me.' He went
away. But a passenger came next, and looked me up and down. He saw that I
was a 'coloured' man. This disturbed him. Out he went and came in again
with one or two officials. They all kept quiet, when another official came
to me and said, 'Come along, you must go to the van compartment.'

'But I have a first class ticket,' said I.

'That doesn't matter,' rejoined the other. 'I tell you, you must go to the
van compartment.'

'I tell you, I was permitted to travel in this compartment at Durban, and
I insist on going on in it.'

'No, you won't,' said the official. 'You must leave this compartment, or
else I shall have to call a police constable to push you out.'

'Yes, you may. I refuse to get out voluntarily.'

The constable came. He took me by the hand and pushed me out. My luggage
was also taken out. I refused to go to the other compartment and the train
steamed away. I went and sat in the waiting room, keeping my hand-bag with
me, and leaving the other luggage where it was. The railway authorities
had taken charge of it.

The man had been pushed into a crucible. As an impressionable youngster,
he was thrown into the fire of discrimination by race and colour.

He was expected to conform to someone else's idea of a lesser human being.
That night in Maritzburg, he is sure to have felt helpless against a
system, as he sat shivering through the night on the railway platform.

He could have disappeared into the night, his head bowed. His shoulders
sagging. No one back home would ever know about it. Yet – from the same
incident - he drafted a value system for himself. A guiding compass, that
would unerringly point to north, as he walked the long road to becoming
the father of a nation.

About an year later -

(circa 1894, outside president Kruger's house, one fine morning, in
Transvaal) –

The consequences of the regulation regarding the use of footpaths were
rather serious for me. I always went out for a walk through President
Street to an open plain. President Kruger's house was in this street. A
very modest, unostentatious building, without a garden, and not
distinguishable from other houses in its neighbourhood. The houses of many
of the millionaires in Pretoria were far more pretentious, and were
surrounded by gardens. Indeed President Kruger's simplicity was
proverbial. Only the presence of a police patrol before the house
indicated that it belonged to some official. I nearly always went along
the footpath past this patrol without the slightest hitch or hindrance.

Now the man on duty used to be changed from time to time. Once one of
these men, without giving me the slightest warning, without even asking me
to leave the footpath, pushed and kicked me into the street. I was
dismayed. Before I could question him as to his behaviour, Mr. Coates, who
happened to be passing the spot on horseback, hailed me and said:

'Gandhi, I have seen everything. I shall gladly be your witness in court
if you proceed against the man. I am very sorry you have been so rudely
assaulted.'

'You need not be sorry,' I said. 'What does the poor man know? All
coloured people are the same to him. He no doubt treats Negroes just as he
has treated me. I have made it a rule not go to court in respect of any
personal grievance. So I do not intend to proceed against him.'

The man had emerged from the crucible.

The incident outside the president's house showed that MKG continued to
maintain the synch between what he thought, what he said and what he did.
He did, what he did (not report the Boer to the law) because of a value
that he had come to believe in.

Even more importantly, the incident outside the president's house showed
that MKG had learnt to think and act, beyond himself. Yes! He would go to
the court, if need be. No! He would not do so, for a personal grievance.

In fact, history shows that whenever mortals are thrown into the fires of
a crucible, they emerge leaders if and only if
• They remain consistent in thought, speech and action. (yes! You are
right! Most politicians would fail this test )
• They extend their concerns to beyond themselves and their immediate
futures. In their thoughts. In their actions.

MKG did not become the leader that he did, overnight. He also took baby
steps. Some of them quiet by chance and some of them quiet
opportunistically.

Having completed his work in Transvaal, Gandhi returned to Durban and was
preparing to sail home. He chanced to see a news item in Natal Mercury
that the Natal government proposed to introduce a bill to disfranchise
Indians.

Gandhi immediately understood the ominous implications of this bill which,
as he said, "is the first nail into our coffin" and advised his
compatriots to resist it by concerned action. But they pleaded their
helplessness without him and begged him to stay on for another month. He
agreed, little realizing that this one month would grow into twenty years.

With his usual earnestness Gandhi then and there turned the farewell
dinner into an action committee and drafted a petition to the Natal
Legislative Assembly. Volunteers came forward to make copies of the
petition and to collect signatures - all during the night. The petition
received good publicity in the press the following morning.

The story continues…. You can pick up the threads on
http://www.mkgandhi.org.

But tomorrow we celebrate his birthday. Let us remember him for the leader
who acted as he spoke. For the leader who thought beyond himself and his
immediate future.

He started out, by doing what he could.

Therein, also lie the seeds of what you and I can also do for
sustainability. For making this planet - a gift, rather than a curse for
our children.

That would be a fitting homage from this generation of mothers and
fathers, to the father of the nation!

Happy Gandhi Jayanthi!

--
http://brijsethi.blogspot.com

A paratha well earned

2008-09-26T17:07:00.004+05:30

I walk into the kitchen. Seeing a yummy paratha lying in a steel plate next to the gas, I walk upto it. ‘Should I go for it?’ I am thinking. ‘Why? Nothing prevents me!’, I tell myself as I reach out to lift the plate.

‘Ow!’ the plate is hot and I pull my hand away immediately.

I look around. There is the smell of chillies in the kitchen and I feel a sneeze coming up. ‘Aaa chi’. I silently mumble ‘bless you’ to myself and, .. ‘Aaa chi’. And another, ‘Aaa chi’.

I quickly switch the exhaust fan on. A busy whirr fills the room and chilly smells begin to wane as the exhaust fan does its work.

The plate has cooled down a bit by now and I walk with it, in my hand, to the dining chair.

‘With so much chilli smell floating around, who needs chilli pickle?’, I say to myself, as I avoid the extra detour to the pickle jar at the other end of the kitchen.

As I sit down on the chair, to munch the paratha, the whirr of the ‘still on’ exhaust fan intrudes into my thoughts. I walk back to the kitchen, switch it off, and come sit down again - Pleased with myself at my own green gesture.

‘My paratha is surely well earned now’, I tell myself. And I think a bit more about what I just did.

I pulled my hand away, the moment I realized through my touch, that the plate was hot.

When the atmosphere was polluted – with chilli smell - and it started affecting me, I immediately took action.

I was able to judge, that the plate would be cooler a little later, by applying well known laws of physics (actually just common sense J) – and take action.

I did not walk extra for the pickle but was willing to walk extra for switching the exhaust fan off.

So why does it become so different when it comes to dramatic and larger - climate change? The scale is grander – much grander – than my silly little paratha and still I do not act. Though I am – in principle – all for it.

I wonder why?

If we know that a steel plate is hot, we avoid touching it till it is cold. But if we know that this planet is hot (strictly speaking, getting hotter), we do nothing to save ourselves. Or, is it that nothing will happen?
If the pollution from chillies smoke can get us sneezing, the pollution from chemicals much worse, will affect us too. Or, is it that no pollution is happening?
If we have the information that the exhaust fan is running and so too the meter for the bill, we are ready to take action - Is there no bill waiting for us at the end of this party?

So why are we so mute? So silent? So passive?

Is it because of the tragedy of the commons? (no one owns the problem, when everyone thinks that by themselves, they can do nothing about it, but someone ought to do something about it)

Is it because when it comes to climate change, action and results, are likely to be separated by a long interval of time? (and by corollary, What’s in it for me? Today?)

What do you think? Why are we so mute? So silent? So passive?

words are cheap

2008-08-29T10:46:00.002+05:30

tears clean

as they flow

pain passes too

accepting pain

2008-08-29T09:42:00.003+05:30

gold surrenders

in malleable flow

unbroken ...

persuation

2008-08-28T21:58:00.002+05:30

a big mouth
lots of hot air ...

serves not

.

Destination

2008-08-28T19:02:00.003+05:30

A road is no
Guarantee to reach

If you know not ...

Work life balance

2008-08-18T10:25:00.001+05:30

Assembling
Jig-Saw quickly

Miss colors

Getting started

2008-08-18T10:11:00.002+05:30

I do think
Of much action

Now begin

Happy Independence Day

2008-08-18T09:36:00.003+05:30

Choices are
a gift to us

Of this day

...

Universal embrace

2008-08-18T09:32:00.003+05:30

I am the witness -

To cause and effect
Of my brothers

...

Access Denied

2008-08-18T09:20:00.005+05:30

I did knock
Needing to get in

Is timepass

Learning to Learn

2008-08-18T09:10:00.004+05:30

To learn is not
Listening to guru

Look within

Parallels to the Matrix

2008-05-24T18:06:00.002+05:30


Pervasive, Seems entirely natural.	Getting there
If you get out of it, you are dead.	Kinder. Makes it hard to get out. Try exporting from gmail, blog, sites …
Conform. And you are safe. Else, deal with Mr. Smith!!!	Use the free stuff, only as it is meant to be used. You imagine, there is no ‘Google Police?’
The matrix knows, but no body else is quiet sure why it exists in the 1^st place?	So what is their business model?
The matrix has no competition	I hope it does not get there …

tags for my blog

2008-05-23T09:35:00.006+05:30

I am a

caring manager
community manager
social entrepreneur
solution builder
spiritual seeker
talent transformer

same same same

2008-04-02T13:59:00.004+05:30

a short poem, an image and a haiku, all came up from the same,

same stab of fear
same surge of joy
same same same

skins separate the same

I saw you doing,
scenes of my deja-vu.

Are we one or two?

Personal Transformation

2008-04-02T13:47:00.002+05:30

Inside I Shovel,
To rid me, of my muck.

May I dump it here?

How to become a vegetarian

2008-04-02T12:59:00.001+05:30

for me to eat meat,
let me watch the killing

pass the veggies pleez!

The key to time management

2008-04-02T12:30:00.001+05:30

plan the week,
measure changes desired.

Ever caught time?

Sir said ...

2008-04-02T12:18:00.001+05:30

I attended a retreat over the weekend and Sir spoke in one of the satsangs about Sw. Eashwarananda's (ramakrishna ashram, now exp.) book, 'Self Realization through Reason'.

What I heard, brought up a haiku.

eat drink OK.
sleep is samadhi key,
just watch it

Books waiting to be written

2008-02-13T09:50:00.001+05:30

I had occassion to listen to Jim Champy in person, when he spoke at the IIITB campus. I was there, as I am helping out Prof. Sadagopan, with their IT strategy.

Champy has researched over 1,000 high growth companies, discovering how these high velocity companies consistently outsmart their competition. Drawing on the strategies of these companies, he identifies powerful ways to compete in even the toughest markets.

1. uncover new growth opportunities and develop the best new business models;
2. how to find sustainable advantages in products, services, and delivery methods;
3. how to connect unexpected customers with unexpected needs;
4. how to identify bubbles worth bursting;
5. how to tap the success of other business phenomena; and
6. how to engage customers by simplifying complexity.

It struck me later, that these same points are also great starting points for figuring out, books waiting to be written.

Alas! (as also in Outsmart!) - It is also a window into my mind, for someone once said, 'Show me the books you are reading and I'll tell you who you are!'. (and writing is more intense than reading :))

Anyways, here is the list of books, waiting to be written:

1. uncover new growth opportunities and develop the best new business models;

Management Consulting at the bottom of the pyramid

Business opportunities in Renewable Energy

The business case for Corporate Social Responsibility

2. how to find sustainable advantages in products, services, and delivery methods;

Reinventing yourself at 40!

Coping with loss, Coming to terms with 'your favorite tragic life event here'

Meaningful work - a do it yourself guide.

3. how to connect unexpected customers with unexpected needs;

7 habbits of commuters struck in traffic

What if you can not rob the bank, on the way to the gas station?

Someone help me. I am successful.

4. how to identify bubbles worth bursting;

Beyond targets. Beyond appraisals.

It takes an engineer to do an engineer's job (and other myths at the workplace)

Longterm is not 90 days.

5. how to tap the success of other business phenomena; and

Transplanting offshoring into 'your favorite 3rd world country here'

Mom & Pop stores fight back!

IT industry lessons for services that want to play the numbers game

6. how to engage customers by simplifying complexity.

Learning skills, all over again, in the internet era

Fast forward - successfully skipping spam

Barter is better - making deals on the social network.

What they do teach you, in school...

2008-02-12T11:05:00.001+05:30

John Taylor Gatto, a former traditional teacher, has considered the downfall of schools and wrote about them eloquently in his book 'Dumbing Us Down'.

CONFUSION: The first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach dis-connections. I teach too much: the orbiting of planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests, fire drills, computer languages, parents’ nights, staff development days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers my students may never see again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the outside world…What do any of these things have to do with each other?

CLASS POSITION: The second lesson I teach is class position. I teach that students must stay in the class where they belong. The children are numbered so that if any gets away they can be returned to the right class. If I do my job well, the kids can’t even imagine themselves somewhere else, because I’ve shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

INDIFFERENCE: The third lesson I teach is indifference. I teach children not to care too much about anything, even though they want to make it appear that they do. How I do this is very subtle. I do it by demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist they drop whatever it is we have been doing and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class nor in any class I know of. Indeed, the lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything?

EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY: The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestinated chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority without appeal, because rights do not exist inside a school—not even the right of free speech, as the Supreme Court has ruled—unless school authorities say they do.

INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY: The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good students wait for teachers to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I, the teacher, can determine what my kids must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions, which I then enforce. If I’m told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think. This power to control what children think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily. Successful children do the thinking I assign them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm. Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it.

PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM: The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. Our world wouldn’t survive a flood of confident people very long, so I teach that a kid’s self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. The cumulative weight of these objective-seeming documents [monthly report cards] establishes a profile that compels children to arrive at certain decisions about themselves and their futures based on the casual judgment of strangers. Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never considered a factor. People need to be told what they are worth.

ONE CAN’T HIDE: The seventh lesson I teach is that one can’t hide. I teach students they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children, there is no private time. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other. I assign a type of extended schooling called “homework,” so that the effect of surveillance, if not that surveillance itself, travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorized from a father or mother, by exploration, or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood. The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted: children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under tight central control.”

Excerpted from: Gatto, John Taylor. Dumbing Us Down. Shamelessly stolen from Live laugh learn lead.

Is there a compass in use?

2008-02-11T09:50:00.001+05:30

I chanced to look at an article titled, ‘Transforming Giants’ in HBR of Jan ’08 ...

The author, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, cites experiences of IBM, P&G, CEMEX and Cisco to make the point that these behemoths are showing a new agility and meaningful results out of a commitment to practiced values.

She says that she sees a decisive shift in the guidance system of these global giants. When employees draw heavily on their shared understanding of mission and on a set of tools available everywhere at once. They go from being impersonal machines to human communities. Shared values, Principles and Platforms become the basis of bigger results.

She says, ‘A paradigm is shifting when long standing contradictions begin to resolve’. Such as, ‘Globalize & localize’, ‘Standardize & innovate’, ‘universal culture & individual differences’, ‘identity & reliance’, ‘business value & societal values’.

I recall a Wipro that was known through the babu raj for its integrity. Integrity went up to being a decision making criteria. For many of us, that was ‘the’ magnet.

Going forward, I know that there is no shortage of talented people in leadership positions in India. Question is, how many of them feel the ownership, to lead?

Perhaps the better question to ask is, ‘Is there a compass in use, three levels below the God?’

A compass made in parts of practised values. Values that are decision making criteria.

A compass made in parts of a techno-savvy social network. That allows managers to touch base instantly and have water cooler conversations from half way across the globe. Anywhere. Anytime.

renewable energy - an inconvenient truth

2008-02-09T09:50:00.001+05:30

I got looking at Al Gore's, 'An inconvenient truth' (see transcript here). Makes we wonder whether a drowning rat still runs the race. We have already begun the enjoy the excitement in the weather. We could potentially also, find the sea beach much closer to Bangalore.

So what, if millions go the Dwarka way. Or with glaciers receeding, states might get into fight for drinking water rather than irrigation water. Water may well become worth dying for.

What if there is a conflagaration in the oil wells of middle east? Will we cycle to Electronic City every day? I will become fit for sure.

OK OK. So what can I do? Can I? Can we?

In the time honoured tradition of arm-chair researchers, I began to look through google. Dr. Pachauri had won the nobel peace prize recently, so I went looking to TERI. Their ongoing projects and the completed ones. They talk about their retreat center, demonstrating their technologies; It makes a fascinating read.

It is never easy to google for google related information because the search engines miscue the 'g word'. But there *is* a google.org to get started, if you want to see what they are doing with renewable energy. Efficient energy usage is a business advantage for their self-managed data centers. They are also investing in research with recharging cars, using solar panelled buildings and power generation cheaper than coal..

Folks! The business cases are beginning to emerge. HP sees a major business case in dynamic smart cooling.

I am beginning to sound like, 'there must be a business case, before I can be persuasive with this ...'. But is a business case really needed?

So will we move because the truth is somewhere out there, hurtling towards us, with inevitable certainity. Or we will move, because someone is beginning to see a business case. In the quarter(ly performance) conditioned mindset, I am afraid, the latter has more chance.

See you at the water races (for the rats ofcourse!).

Facilitating innovation

2008-02-04T09:50:00.001+05:30

We facilitated a significant amount of innovation that translated into 180+ patents over the year. The previous year there were 7.

Our biggest successes were in putting the enabling systems in place, pushing the researchers to be more customer aware and having good upstream reviews on business value.

Enabling systems in place

We started from, 'what gets measured, gets managed'. Built a healthy sense of competition for the managers (of the researchers, not the researchers themselves) and made the accomplishments 'needed and visible'.

monthly dashboard, broken by enabler and lab. Enabler focus to peg responsibility. Lab focus to create competition

messaging by boss and boss'es boss on business need

monthly patent awards event and clubbed with 10 year/ 5 year retention successes

visible 'patents wall' with plaques

easy access to patent attorney. no mystery on 'how to'

few 'push events' also

Customer aware Researchers

The researchers were in their comfort zone of technology and code. It takes context switching effort to go meet customers and listen. Our boss was smart enough to take on a presales charter that created a pull and visibility for these researchers to go face customers. We helped take the fear and laziness out of the 1st engagement (for the researchers).

customer orientation workshops

labwise customer engagement dashboard - provided by a colleague function

customer engagement reports - another far-sighted colleague function

insight sharing sessions

idea sharing events

Upstream focus on business value

There is no substitute for 'demanding more' when the other person knows that what she is doing, is really needed for the business. When she is needed to make a difference to the big picture. The big picture may need custom zooming in and rexplaining (several times). This was the purpose of reviews, done as early as possible. Done as many times as possible.

enablement at doer level, competition at enabler level - this happened by accident, but was a major success factor

allow the natural genetic tendencies of our boss to flower - he happens to be 'Mr. Demand More!'.

PONDER - Project OwNership DEvelopement Reviews

Short and sweet - Everyone pulled together. In the same direction.

Unfinished business

2008-01-24T19:40:00.002+05:30

about collaborative development frameworks

2008-01-24T09:50:00.001+05:30

I was looking at collaborative development frameworks and ibm's jazz came up in the search.

A quick look makes me wonder what is its value beyond what the folks at sourceforge have already been doing for ages. Version control, Bug tracking, Release management. Even evangelical videos!

I liked two things.

project dashboards. easy to extract information from what is already being collected. but watch out for bliss arising from ignorance (of what may still be missing)

jazz development on jazz.net in full public glare, perhaps pointing to the future of software delivery

I missed three things.

an online equivalent for the richness of face to face interactions. You simply can't have water cooler conversations from halfway across the globe, the normal way

a blackberry equivalent. On the move access, anytime, anywhere and only mildly asynchronous :) (blackberry works. yahoo IM works. can the two be married online? Using milo?

a palette of facilitation tools - rendered online. Anonymous commenting, force field, multi-voting, etc.

Is there a killer app waiting here?

Rules for being human

2008-01-23T14:11:00.000+05:30

1. Your will receive a body. You may like it, or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full time informal school called life. Each day in this school you have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think they are irrelevant and stupid.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error and experimentation. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately works.

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go to the next lesson. Periodically, the lesson will be re-presented to see if you still remember it.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learnt. If no lessons is being presented, it is likely that you are no longer alive.

6. There is no better than 'here'. When your 'there' has become a 'here', you will simply acquire another 'there'. That will again look better than 'here'.

7. Others are simply mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you make of them is up to you; the choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie inside you. The answers to lifes questions lie inside you. All you have to do is look, listen and trust.

10. You will forget all this. That fact is itself a lesson.

Thanks to vasu for sharing.

Does your resume add up?

2008-01-16T14:20:00.000+05:30

'speed dating' to dive to the heart of issues

2008-01-14T12:22:00.001+05:30

speed dating type of quick 1-on-1 interaction can form the basis of extracting groups wisdom for what the issues may be.

Here is how it could be done -

Divide the group into two. Form into two concentric circles. Get each participant to pair up with a partner from the other circle (person opposite to her, in the other concentric circle).

Conduct Speed dating - Each ‘pair’ speaks – and then rotates. Everyone has
a. At least one issue that they think, should be discussed and one action that should be implemented
b. This is shared and ‘sold’ to your partner, when you are meeting in the speed dating rounds.

Once the rotations are done: do Facilitated Recording

Go around. Give time to everyone to talk about their experience without taking any names:

a. What do you remember from these responses?
- What words or phrases stood out for you?
- Were there any surprises?
- What did you hear that intrigued you? Something that you heard made you want to find out more?

b. What is one issue, you would use to characterize this group?

c. What action can make this group effective?

Amateur photo shoot (outbound activity)

2008-01-14T11:13:00.000+05:30

A team-based. treasure hunt — bringing back digital photos of interesting places and things.

Teams of about 4 people.

Materials Required: Cameras for each team (cellphone camera is OK and by and large # of cellphone with cameras should cover. If needed - do team formation based on those who have cameras in cellphone, by allowing them to choose roundrobin).

Setting: Outdoors.

Prior preparation:

Prepare a list of about ten interesting places, things, and circumstances that can be captured using a camera. You could list, for example:

A group photo with someone famous
The most relaxing place you can find
The biggest tree
A photo of a game you would rather be playing
A photo with a yellow color in it
A photo also involving workers in the resort
A human pyramid of at least seven people
The funniest thing you can find

Instructions:

Set a time limit for the groups (e.g. two hours or so). Instruct the teams to find as many things on the list and take a picture with all the group members in the photo. When time expires, have all members reconvene and present their photos along with the checklist.

Debriefing:

If there are 4 or 5 laptops, the presentations can be done by each of the teams, with lot of fun.

Award one point for each successful photo item and bonus points for extra creativity or effort. Or let the group decide the best effort.

Additional payoff:

Good memories of the offsite in terms of the photos. Good show & tell value too.

beginnings

2008-01-01T15:11:00.000+05:30

Go take a break

2007-12-25T22:35:00.002+05:30

What is Program Management

2007-12-25T22:00:00.004+05:30

Why be a program manager?

2007-12-22T21:27:00.001+05:30

Dilemmas faced by managers of IT comapanies

2007-12-08T12:27:00.000+05:30

1. own organization's objectives versus partner's objectives
2. deliver today or grow for tomorrow
3. multiple time pressures
4. looking good myself versus team (looking good)
5. looking good versus delivering goods
6. doing the work versus managing expectations
7. following bosses orders versus doing what is right for the company
8. doing versus getting it done
9. getting it done - driver versus enabler
10. fudging facts/ telling untruth to varying degree
... status to supervisor/ partner
... feedback to reports
... task requests to/ from peers
11. focussing on tasks versus focussing on employees
12. focussing on employees versus focussing on supervisor
13. being a 'yes man' versus standing up for something.

Black box magic for program managers

2007-12-08T12:25:00.000+05:30

1. creating conducive environment > larger funnel > common language > urgency/ end goal reality/ end goal clarity

2. common measures > incenting (leading indicators) > linkage to results

3. streamlining effort > not reinventing > strike when iron hot > strike where iron hot > low hanging fruit

4. ongoing communication > communicating successes > reaffirming sync to larger goal

Leadership Tips (short movie)

2007-09-08T12:17:00.002+05:30

The Bengaluru CEO - what is keeping her awake?

2007-09-07T12:29:00.000+05:30

If only real life was as easy as changing a name to wish away problems. The name change is not keeping her awake.

A stronger rupee and rising costs of the IT industry - Yes. Inability to scale - Yes. Crumpling infrastructure - Yes. Lost brand-value - Maybe.

The talent transformation answers to a good nights sleep for the CEO lies in enabling many more into the IT industry.

In getting the good ones to fail at worthwhile challenges. In getting the not so good ones, to succeed at routine ones.

Also in figuring out who the good ones are.

Also in getting many many not so good ones to come on board. If a hammer will do, then why use a sledgehammer. If vocational skills will suffice, then why waste engineering degrees?

Is the government moving a proposal sometime soon to rename the ITI diploma to BE? or for that matter renaming ITI to IIT?

Ofcourse, it is not likely to matter again, what rest of the world may think. And, it just might have more value-add than renaming Bangalore!

The new perimeter of social interaction

2007-09-05T09:49:00.001+05:30

This is the sony mylo @ $350 street.

A walking port into the internet, the moment you are in WiFi range. You could skype (make free phone calls anywhere in the world) or use the instant messenger (a thumb pad pulls out).

You could in the same instant also connect the cool people at the next table (if they let you) as well as to anyone in the big bad internet.

Thus begins social interaction of a new type. A simultaneous presence of two types. The regular face to face and at the same time all that you earlier did from your PC.

Imagine swapping photos, music or videos as you interact. Would it be like being able to shoot with a gun rather than only punch?

Imagine connecting to linkedIn or Orkut as you chat. Would it be like having ground support as you swoop in for the kill?

The haves would have the advantage. So much so, that the have-nots would find in unacceptable. The new perimeter would be based on having one.

Like all things technology, it would have the potential to make lots of difference, both good and bad.

Here are some additional possiblities

internet radio, that shapes its content based on the gathering it is being listened in

meeting new people in the marketplace, but not as strangers

negotiating better deals in the marketplace

It would also be a device to reach out to learners with. Learners who not only consume content but create their own - both at the same time!

How would learning thus change?

(Check out http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/mylo/prod/index.html for mylo)

Towards shared accountability and rewarding micro-contributions

2007-09-05T09:49:00.000+05:30

I wonder if there are lessons in the money market that we can use.

These ideas are only half cooked. I will try to state in the hope that
this may be valuable to those interested in organizational development
*and* my economics-savvy colleagues may see connections better

1. ram charan - yes the guru himself - spoke about assigning a budget on
growth initiatives an organization want to prioritize. He speaks about
using real money and many (sub)organizations may not have real
disposable money but may still have natural resources :). I am thinking
that the money market can be built on a notional currency (indicative of
the worth we place on those natural resources) rather than pure money.
To give it value it would need to be linked to real money in some
fashion though.

2. typically the currency (in our context) would be linked to ownership
behavior, getting things done, customer centricity. Managers would trade
in this currency and use it to reward engineers across teams on whatever
end result they are chasing.

3. the 'supply side' of the currency can be estimated as (say) money
value of 30% of the time of the workforce. This does NOT mean that 30%
of everyone's time needs to be apportioned. It simply means that when
currency has full value, 30% of the organization's spare time will be
well harnessed.

4. the 'rbi governer - the ceo -' would assign this budget to various
A=owners (A as in RACI, owner as in owner of an initiative) to use as
they fit. In turn the A-owners will pass this to either other A-owners
or to lab/section/project managers. They may even start of new 'A
owners' in the process.

5. Typical way of 'passing' this money would be to strike 'contracts'.
Note that the supply side is not automatically available for consumption
(through the org structure) but is routed through the initiatives we
want to prioritize and drive. The 'contract making' can happen at
multiple levels and those who are involved will automatically rise to
higher wealth levels (I hope :)).

6. The wealth will flow through the doers. In that sense, measuring the
extent of flow through an individual will give a rough measure of how
much of an 'enabler' she is while her wealth level would indicate, how
much of a doer she is.

7. The CEO would review the money position in this currency every
quarter - like ram charan had asked that we should. He could also review
the flow and wealth (of different enabling and driving functions). In
turn the A-owners will review their contracts. In the process contracts
can go through all negotiations that any free market allows.

8. Typically, the flow of currency (and activity) might be facilitated
by offering a 'bazaar' where services/ tasks are traded/ purchased in
this currency.

9. Over a certain amount of time some individuals will begin to
accumlate wealth in this currency. The simpler (and it might be best to
start with) approach is to allow 'encashing' this worth either in money
or in prospects or both.

10. Later variations can involve allowing anyone who has this money
(wealthy workers, traders in the bazaar and original money suppliers) to
trade in a 'stock market' that determines the actual worth of different
initiative, once they are in the trading market.

11. A digression - one might have to introduce an IPO stage, past which
the intitiatives can be traded. This might be a great way to sustain
initiatives over time :).

I have looked at theory of markets and at open money concepts to arrive
at some of this. Yahoo has an internal currency called yootles (from
yahoo and utility) and second life deals with linden dollars (mapped at
all times with full covertability to US dollars). There may be other
success role-models also.

my intent

2007-09-03T09:49:00.002+05:30

I believe that going forward learning and doing will be tightly coupled. The better application will be the one that teaches interestingly, as you begin to work on it.

Training is dead. Long live training (in this new learn by doing avatar).

To - 1st hand - understand the dynamics, I hope to learn and deliver --

Face-to-face experiences such as workshops and offsites.

E-Learning experiences on the web.

Even portable experiences, that you can take along with you on a mp4 player, as you commute to work.

My subject matter expertise

I hope that some of what I have learnt in my previous lifetimes, can serve as useful subject matter expertise. Here's the pitch :) -

I have practised, what I facilitate. I have worked as a Senior VP, a Director, a General Manager and prior to that as a program and a project manager. I do see the big picture.

In staff positions, I have been a CTO, a six sigma black belt and a corporate trainer. I know the change maker's tools. But more importantly, I genuinely care for people.

I understand IT, Web and Multi-media technologies well enough to quickly put together working tools for transformation, rather than only talk about them.

improving face-to-face meetings with online tools

2007-08-02T09:49:00.000+05:30

We do spend a lot of time in meetings. Often, I have wondered, if there is scope to be more effective in meetings. Once in a while someone will lament the fact that half the people are mentally absent. They are busy doing email or sms while still physically present in the meeting.

If you can't beat the enemy then why not join them? Why not use online tools to make meetings effective?

Two trends are visible on the IT horizon. One - the emergence of rich internet applications.
Two - the availability of portable online interaction tools.

Online interaction tools are fast evolving towards portable. Sony's mylo is opening up a new perimeter of social ineraction. It might be possible to supplement the face to face meetings with online interaction tools.

Teenagers today can instantly relate to the fact that it is perfectly cool to SMS, while sitting in the same room face to face. The rest of us may need some additional getting used to.

As far as Rich Internet Applications are concerned, they are best epitomized by the blurring of the line between what the browser can do and what the desktop can do.

For now, let us assume that all meeting participants agree to use their laptops to make their face to face meeting more effective. Later they could travel lighter and simply use the 'mylo' or 'dekho' or something similar. The toolbox would provide this arsenal:

chat 1;1 with any of the meeting participants, while the meeting is still in progress,

provide the option to respond to a poll that anyone generates on the fly (response can be named or anonymous, special poll type is force field analysis),

consolidation of group wisdeom - wiki style - while the meeting is still in progresss,

consolidation of action items before meeting concludes,

rating participants on preparation/ meeting participation/ meeting effectiveness e tc.)

In addition, most meetings have an explicit purpose. To brainstorm, To inform, or To review - are typical to meetings.

If it is a brainstorming meeting, then the laptop could also:

provide a structured brainstorming process
- A silent think time before talking.
- No judging.
- No repeating already stated ideas.
- After the brainstorming, some form of sorting & clubbing.
- After the sorting, some form of evaluating with multi-voting, etc.

record all ideas, on a shared whiteboard

maintain brainstormed ideas in a managed list so that similar ideas can be grouped (later) and people can go easy with ideas that are already on the table

provide tools to multivote on the ideas. Example: spread your 5 votes for doability and impact, on ideas brainstored so far!

If it is a review meeting, then

What are entry/ exit criteria?

Whether the entry/ exit criteria are met? and

What are the corresponding actions?

If it is an information sharing meeting then

sharing of information sources,

sharing of linkages to related information and/or

sharing previous context and decisions.

In any of the meetings, a poll is a quick way to fix the group opinion. Most people will not stand alone and point an accusing finger at a colleague, but together as a group - and anonymously if need be - they can easily fix the problem makers.

Polls can help decide quickly

if the brainstorm has become a subtle evaluation.

Or a review a beat up session.

Or an information sharing meeting a tirade.

Initiated by any of the participants, it can quickly help bring a meeting back in control. It is almost as if there are as many facilitators in the room, as participants. And no one is helpless anymore to just sit silently and bear it all!

An online presence usually leaves a trail. This can help bring late joinees to the same page. It will probably be also useful for folding in offline participants.

With a little bit of extra programming, a machine indication on laptops if audio generated by a room is bad (rather than waiting for Anju to exclaim, 'i can't hear you!'), can help people speak closer to microphones and audibly. It would be a life-saver for those dialing in. The programming will be along the lines of using the built-in laptop microphone to capture the sound quality in the room and comparing the results across different laptops, to get an idea of overall audio quality.

Finally, the meeting program can generate feedback on how well each of the participants interacted and participated (using a heuristic between user feedback and its own usage data) and also share it to instill better participation, if required.

There are atleast 2 online meeting and collaboration tools that are free. In a subsequent post, I will evaluate them for suitability on some of these counts.

Giving feedback

2007-07-31T18:52:00.000+05:30

Steve, Bob, and Jeff were working on a very high scaffolding one day when suddenly, Steve falls off and is killed instantly. After the ambulance leaves with Steve's body, Bob and Jeff realize that one of them is going to have to tell Steve's wife.

Bob says he's good at this sort of sensitive stuff, so he volunteers to do the job. After two hours he returns, carrying a six-pack of beer.

"So did you tell her?" asks Jeff.

"Yep", replied Bob.

"Say, where did you get the six-pack?"

Bob informs Jeff. "She gave it to me!"

"What??" exclaims Jeff, "you just told her her husband died and she gave you a six-pack??"

"Sure," Bob says.

"Why?" asks Jeff.

"Well," Bob continues, "when she answered the door, I asked her, 'are you Steve's widow?'

'Widow?', she said, 'no, no, you're mistaken, I'm not a widow!'

So I said: "I'll bet you a six-pack you ARE!'"

the role model for trainers

2007-07-29T09:49:00.000+05:30

Real learning, only comes to the doer. If I do not put my insight into action quickly, chances are that I will just forget all about it.

We - in the training fraternity - can learn much from vegetable vendors. Afterall, they also are in the business of delivering a perishable commodity.

tighten your belts ...

2007-07-28T11:38:00.000+05:30

Have you wondered why they ask you to 'tighten your belts'?

The real reason is simple. If you don't, then gravity can take over. You may eventually find yourself with your pants at your feet.

A situation that has two drawbacks

one - you don't look your smartest, thus.

two - it is difficult to walk - let alone run - when thus constrained.

If you are in the IT industry in India, you are sure to be hearing some variant of 'tighten your belts'.

A bit different from the earlier, 'fasten your seatbelts' (and be ready to fly abroad and have a great time) :).

Reason: Rupee - the ever grovelling one, upto now - is learning to flex some muscles. As it strengthens, the stuff coming out of india becomes more expensive for the dollar spenders. Indian services in the IT arena appear less compelling on cost comparisons.

To compensate, we have to offer more. It is the nature of demand and supply. We had it good. But now we need to tighten our belts - and offer more.

Some of us are sure to go into denial. Things have been good and easy upto now. How can it change overnight? Let us just carry on as usual and things will be just fine. Maybe so. Maybe not so.

This is a time of opportunity too. And that is the real reason why we must tighten our belts now.

Champion cyclists from Tour de France breakout from the pack, at the start of a tough section because that is where it is easy to separate the men from the boys.

In the same vein, when top positions and sexy roles have many contendors, it is the tough times, that help point to those who will be at the top, when you come by next year.

These are the ones who not only are OK with working on a saturday, but can probably think of 3 other options that are smarter than this. These are the ones who can talk about these options - and whatever else - because they believe they own the problem.

They believe that they are the answer. For them, 'tigten your belts' is a war-cry. A chance to find their place as men, in the corporate battlegrounds.

Be one of these warriors!

get on your feet,
and pant, if needed.

your pant is needed,
not at your feet.

checking attrition - a program for managers

2007-07-28T09:49:00.000+05:30

This could be a 4 hour workshop if done face to face or about 5 1-hour sessions online (over the course of a week) if done online.

Typical participants would be practising 'project managers' who are having trouble retaining employees (their teams have high attrition).

The insights that I would want them to take would be:

realize cerebrally the high cost of attrition and the relatively lower cost of retention

realize that retention is a doable task - most suffering managers believe in their helplessness.
- realize that retention goes beyond just giving out larger amounts of money (and even stock)

explore (and perhaps realize) what is the best value for my time spend on this direction.
- it is important to invest personal time in retention

rest of the program - draw up an action plan
- mine their own wisdom. tie it into time management & making a commitment look for best practises of the organization
- look for industry standard best practices

conclude by tying up, how followup and closure on the action plan will happen

the Case Method

2007-07-27T09:49:00.001+05:30

Case discussion method comes in useful to strengthen insights and preserve them, before they can be put to use. This given that all learning is a perishable commodity. If you quickly don't put what you learnt, to use, you loose (it).

In fact, if we think about the essence of learning, it is like traversing a mountain range. one peak after the other. As we climb to a peak (learning insight) there are mutliple ways to go forward (valleys = insightful actions). The choice of which valley to go through is the dilemma for the traveller.

Taking a particular path rules out all others but does not make them wrong paths to take. Yet, we have to move on. Which is the best path to take is a great discussion to have. If you have suffered this method, you will recall, 'What should Mr. XXX do? and why?'. This is the essence of case discussions.

Tying up insights to (multiple) possibilities of action. That is the key.

I spent two years in a business school, 3 cases every weekday, never having the certainity of what was the right answer. As a youngster, it forced me to become an adult, because I had to take sides and make choices. By making choices and by learning to see what the choices really were, in the muddle of multiple inputs and chaos - I became better equipped to manage business. To me this was the essence of doing my MBA and more than any profound insights, this was really the gift that the program gave me.

Today we are running with packaged solutions and instant answers. Like skirts - even MBA programs have become shorter. Yet it is important to put our arms around a dilemma and figure out which is the best valley to walk through - to the next mountain peak.

And then talk about it. And by God! take a stand around it (even if it wrong or only in passing).

The case method of discussion provides a safe opportunity to do so but there are neither enough relevant cases around, nor enough case discussion teachers. And it takes a lot of personalized effort and skill, everytime you run a
case discussion. Is there a possibility to automate case disucssions? Would it be worth the
effort?

Learning should be fun - lessons from food

2007-07-27T09:49:00.000+05:30

Learning should be fun

* Good food contains nutrition and taste.
* Good (digital) Content needs to contains learning and fun - BOTH.

With no taste it would be a chore to eat. So too, learning without fun

Fun fights boredom. Can focus.

* Some live to eat; Others eat to live.
* For some learning part of content comes first; For others - fun.

For unwilling learners fun is always welcome. And whether you like it or not - during the course of your spiel, people *will* get bored and unwilling (to continue) at some times.

Learning Design balances conflicting goals

* Nutrition is a balance of multiple components.
* So too learning (tell quickly versus experience 1st hand. go breadth versus go depth. concept versus practise)

In unstructured self learning – the responsibility to strike these balances, becomes yours

* Only eating balanced food keeps you healthy
* Be careful similarly in what content you consume

How do you feel, after browsing the web aimlessly, for one whole afternoon?
Once in a while it is OK to binge. So too for content. There is place for meaningless entertainment too.
Under pressure, we tend to eat unhealthy. Convenience comes first. Are you eating healthy? Are you consuming healthy content?

Self learning is mostly ad-hoc and unstructured. This is not good.

* A nutritionist can help design a balanced diet, keeping in mind your unique requirements.
* I am yet to hear of a nutritionist in the workplace, so this is do-it-yourself advise)

This role is waiting to happen. With RSS feeds, crawlers and aggregators perhaps.

Derieve your learning goals

* You probably have some ideas on how you can eat better but usually they remain just that (ideas).
* So too for digital content

Learn to a larger plan. Learn to suit your work needs.

Learning that has the local context is best

* Locally produced foods are usually best value.
* So too content that has local relevance for you.

Learning that improves actual work results is best

* Never ignore what your stomach tells you.
* So too your work related results.

Self learning requires sustained discipline

* The best planned diets are nought, unless you stick to them.
* So too your disciplined consumption of content

Changing to a disciplined mode of self-learning will require effort. The gains may be worth it.

* We are creatures of habit, when it comes to eating
* Making a dietary change requires effort & discipline; So too your content consumption pattern

Consume Healthy Content - when you see it. Better still, have good eating habbits.
Learn a little everyday - Regularly.
Digest what you learn, then learn more.

Stretching IT for business transformation

2007-07-25T09:49:00.000+05:30

Stretching IT for business transformation: This post explores stretching Information Technology for Business Transformation. Consider two scenarios. One, Doing better, what ever we do today. Two, applying new ways of interacting and influencing, to business transformation.

Doing better, whatever we do today

In the yin and yang of doing better - enabling, nurturing and celebrating people comes from the feminine principle. This is the softer gentler aspect. Like the flesh and tissue in a body. The underlying structure, systems and processes are like the skeleton. The structure that hosts - and protects - the body mass. By building and tweaking this structure- using IT - we can do better on doing better :)

Applying new ways of interacting & influencing

Rich content and interactions - are two new forces, out to shape the net, going forward. The net is shaping how we work and therefore these forces can shape business transformation. Rich Content is about integrating database content, audio, video and animation. It is about good design - simple and to the point. But first of all, it is about telling a story - grabbing my attention and keeping it! Interactions is about how to reach out with rich content. My mouse-clicks are not entirely my own. It is about gathering mouse clicks. But it is more too. I spend time with friends because I want to be with them. I hang out, where my heart is. I take my work, where it gets done. This leads to opportunities to explore rich content and new ways of interaction, that can lead to Business Transformation.

Vocational Education - what is needed

2007-07-24T09:49:00.000+05:30

Vocational education - what is needed: Amongst those who care about 'teaching folks to fish' (rather than giving them stuff), there is usually violent agreement that:

India desperately needs vocational education today.
- the merge into global economy will further impact traditional jobs available. Yet it is inevitable.
- many current employment opportunities under-utilize available resources (supply side surplus)
- the supply side surplus is actually an opportunity in the global context
- if not managed, it can impact critical things like vote bank satisfaction with the ruling party (Unemployment, Increasing gap between haves and have nots)
- the current delivery infrastructure (vocational schools, polytechnics, industry-academia collaboration, the very nature of our education system) is likely to remain inadquate.

Many countries are way ahead. China, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, UK - to name a few. We can learn from them.
- Most of them are using eLearning in some variants
- They are well connected to the consumers of vocational produce
- They have scale.

The simplest assumption is that jobs can be created by building skills in those who need the job. They in turn, invade and adjust the markets, with their new found skills. The crux is enabling the ecosystem for continuing engagement - something that current vocational education struggles to do with its 'take it or leave it' stance. To make job creation more effective, it is useful to look at the following framework and create an incubator, that provides all these --

eLearning @ training function

2007-07-23T09:49:00.000+05:30

eLearning can help you remove recurring costs from your training budget. Do away with re-trainings & follow-ups.

you can move your tell sessions to eLearning. To maintain interest - Content can be made rich and Games introduced for eLearning.

Yes, you will need to (re)design once - using your existing content and business context. But the interaction hours can then be more meaningful. Even managers can become trainers when all they have to do is, answer questions.

You can deploy eLearning anywhere, anytime, any number of times. Use the internet. Use mobile phones and mp4 players. If you wish, you a blended approach

Immediate Application areas:

1. induction programs for new joinees
2. knowledge transfer trainings
3. technical skills trainings
4. business messages from leaders/ partners
5. guidance from visiting experts

The man and the elephant

2007-06-30T18:23:00.000+05:30

It's been a while I've posted anything. Yet another release to thank... And so life goes on.

Brij, I've enjoyed your posts very much. I really wish I could write as humorously as you can. I can only read and enjoy. But hopefully, I bring a different perspective - not as riveting as yours though...

Now here's another story:
A man on a safari in Kenya gets separated from his group and wanders off, lost. He comes across an elephant lying in a clearing, nursing a foot that has been pierced by a branch.

Carefully and slowly, the man approaches the elephant. Once he gets close enough to touch the beast, the man yanks the branch from its foot. He runs back across the clearing, then stops to look back at the elephant. The huge animal stares at him. Then it rises to its feet, walks slowly over to the man, and touches him on the forehead with its trunk. Then the gentle giant turns and walks away.

The man eventually meets up with his group and goes home.

Ten years pass.

The man goes to the zoo with some friends. At one enclosure, he notices that an elephant is staring at him intently. The elephant drops the food it is eating and approaches the fence, staring all the while at the man.

The man’s friend says, “Hey, looks like that elephant recognizes you.” And the man starts wondering, Is this the same elephant?

As the elephant stares at him, he becomes more convinced that this is the same elephant he saved in Kenya. He goes closer to the fence. The elephant stares at him. He starts to climb the fence, despite the protests of his friends. He drops into the enclosure. The elephant stares at him. Then, slowly, the elephant reaches out its trunk and touches him on the forehead.

I know this elephant! the man thinks. Then the elephant stretches out his trunk again, and grabs the man around the waist and slams him on the ground.

It wasn’t the same elephant.

What did you think as you read this story. I think it is all about assumptions. Failures happen if one doesn't plan for an event. And under what condition do you not plan for an event - the only condition is usually if you haven't thought about the possibility of the event occurring a.k.a an assumption. It's like a friend said - Assumption makes an Ass of u and me. It certainly made an ass of the man in the story.

The problem usually is that assumptions are very difficult to think about because they are usually hidden by the filters or blinkers with which we view our world. What are these blinkers. Psychologists have long said that our brain filters out most of the raw data our senses receive by categorizing them. The brain then only focusses on the big picture - "Ah table there (but you may have missed the fact that one of the legs are cracked), let's put the machine on it". I do not examine all the legs of ALL the tables whether in my house or at office or anywhere else because by default legs are not cracked. One cannot view raw data without blinkers, we would be much more ineffective. So for our great capabilites in pattern recognition, we give up a lot of things including an ability to recognize assumptions.

Is all lost. No, it is still possible to think about assumptions. When you are planning a project - look at each task and examine what could fail. e.g. take the task "coding of xxx component". Let's list the assumptions:
a. Do the people assigned have the skills (obvious).
b. Will they be taking vacations (we usually forget to plan in vacations, marriages, personal needs into the project plan).
c. Have we buffered in for small personal issues (she has a toothache at an inconvenient moment).
d. What are the dependencies - perhaps some other component needs to complete first. Will they do so. Are the interfaces clear and agreed upon (No, don't tell me that you have an Interface agreement document - I have seen assumptions in IADs too).
e. Do we have to get specific hardware or software in place for this task.

These are the obvious ones. Let's look at this task from the perspective of an organization outsourcing this to a remote site:
a. Does the mgt have the maturity to deliver the project (& hence the component, task).
b. Does the quality system have sufficient checks and balances to provide a good quality task result. if not, what is our mitigation.
c. Does the Organization have the capability to proactively own and cleanly deliver the task?
d. What is the net return of value I get by giving to site A vs. site B.

Let's see - that's nine possibilities for five minutes of thinking - if I spend more time and have more details about the task, I'll generate quite a few more. Guess how many assumptions would exist for an average project (approx. 100-150 tasks). How do we process them all (obviously all are not equally important) and mitigate the critical ones? Something to think about...

Another (brief) one about assumptions. The student was asked to write a one page essay about a brick wall. He was totally confused and just didn't know what to write.

So he went to his Prof. Prof said "Describe the wall as best as you can".

"But what's there to describe, it's just a wall. I can't write more than one sentence" protested the student.

So then the Prof said "OK. Then write about one brick in the wall".

And as the student chose one brick and started writing, he suddenly found he could just keep writing on and on. Try examining and writing about one brick and see what happens. Think about it...

a Male, by any other name?

2007-06-08T12:04:00.000+05:30

A software engineer went on a cruise, and proceeded to have the time of his life.

At least for a while. A hurricane came up unexpectedly. The ship went down and was lost instantly. The man found himself swept up on the shores of an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing. Only bananas and coconuts.

Used to five-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do. So, for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice, longed for his old life, and fixed his gaze on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.

One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen.

She rowed up to him.

In disbelief, he asked her: "Where did you come from, and how did you get here?"

"I rowed from the other side of the island," she said. "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."

"Amazing," the software engineer said, "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many of you are there? You were really lucky to have a row boat wash up with you."

"It's only me," she said, "and the row boat didn't wash up, nothing did."

He was confused, "Then how did you get the row boat?"

"Oh, simple," replied the woman. "I made it out of raw material that I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum-tree branches, I wove the bottom from palm branches, and the sides and stern came from eucalyptus tree."

"But, but, that's impossible," stuttered the man. "You had no tools or hardware - how did you manage?"

"Oh, that was no problem," the woman said. "On the south side of the island, there is a very unusual strata of exposed alluvial rock. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that to make tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But enough of that. Where do you live?"

Sheepishly, the man confessed that he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.

"Well, let's row over to my place then," she said.

After a few minutes of rowing, she docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked onto shore, he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman tied up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead, dumbstruck.

As they walked into the house, she said casually, "It's not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please. Would you like to have a drink?"

"No, no, thank you," he said, still dazed. "I couldn't drink another drop of coconut juice."

"It's not coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have made a still - How about a Pina colada?

"Trying to hide his continued amazement, the software engineer accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk.

After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, "I'm going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to have a shower and a shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."

No longer questioning anything, the man went into the bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bonehandle. Two shells honed to a hollow-ground edge were fastened to its tip, inside a swivel mechanism.

"This woman is absolutely amazing," he mused. "What next?

"When he returned, the woman greeted him. She beckoned for him to sit down next to her.

"Tell me," she began suggestively, slithering closer to him, brushing her leg against his, "We've both been out here for a very long time. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing to do for all of these months."

She stared into his eyes. He couldn't believe what he was hearing - this was like all of his dreams coming true in one day.

"You mean...," he replied, "I can check my e-mail from here?"

Are you also caught up in transactions? Has your routine taken a life of its own and become even bigger than you? What are you missing?

(thanks to Dinkar, for sharing)

How to manipulate developers

2007-06-06T13:19:00.000+05:30

by Don Hinkelman - Sunday, 16 April 2006, 10:03 PM
[adapted from a post by Brent Simmons. taken from the moodle forum.]

Imagine you're in my shoes: you're me, a Moodle Developer, for a minute. Think about feature requests, for example - I have a list several hundred items long of really, really good ideas.

I've heard pretty much everything multiple times, though now and again I do hear new ideas. Which just makes the list longer!
Then of course there are bugs to fix, schedules to meet, tests to run, docs to update, user interfaces to design, lots and lots of things. Most of your time is spent just sitting in a chair, coding, because that's the only way things get done. (Oh, and then there's email. And writing blog posts. And so on.)

So what gets my attention?

Okay, to put it in a nutshell - the input is like a firehose, and there's a ton of work to do, and both things are always true. So what do *you* do, the average Moodle user to manipulate me, the average Moodle developer, to do the things you want done. Here are some things that don't work and some things that do work .

Manipulative Things That Don't Work Anymore

The - just one thing - maneuver

This is the one where if I did - just one thing - then you'd _____ (insert something good). This doesn't work because, well, I know you really want more than one thing - or you will, anyway. And of course there are lots of people who want just one thing - but it's a different - just one thing - for each person.

The - I consider the lack of feature x a bug - ploy

When you'd like to see a feature, you can't make it happen faster by telling me you consider the lack of a feature a bug. It's clever, yes, but not the nth time. I really do classify stuff by bugs and features, and a feature really is a feature. (Yes, some features are obvious to-dos, but they're still features.)

The - surely it must be easy for a developer like you - scheme

This one almost works, but I've grown immune. (Slowly, over many years.) Very few things are easy. Quite often the coding is easy - the actual coding is one of the easier parts of the job. It's the user interface design and software architecture that's harder. Many of the easy requests aren't easy at all. (Some of them require advanced artificial intelligence - and raw computing horsepower - not seen outside the wreckage of the Roswell craft. Easy often means easy to a human - and, much as I love my Mac, no amount of ardor will give it human intuition.)

The - maybe you should put it to a vote - finagle

I've learned not to take that as an insult. It's not meant that way. I used to think the person was besmirching my ability to determine what's best for the product based on what I think and the feedback I get. I've learned that lots of software developers do in fact take votes from users, and that's cool. it's just that I get so much feedback already that setting up voting means more work with not much added benefit. I already know what people are asking for the most.

Being mean

Okay, this one is hugely rare - Moodle users being the way they are. (Super-nice folks!) But now and again someone does come across as less than polite. It doesn't work. I take the bug or request seriously, but I'm not going to give something a higher priority just because the person was rude. (Better to butter me up. Don't worry about going too far - you can't. ;)

Manipulative Things That Always Work

Now I'll tell you straight up the secret formula--how to manipulate me. Save me time. Time is so precious, it's everything.

Saving time with bug reports

Consider bug reports. What's the hardest thing about a bug report? Almost never is it actually fixing the bug that's hard. (Sometimes, but not usually.) The hard part is reproducing the bug - that is, understanding what's going on and being able to make it happen at will.

Once I understand a bug and can make it happen, I can fix it.

Good bug reports contain as much detail as possible and are specific. Generalizing and leaping to conclusions in a bug report is not helpful and is usually incorrect.

For instance, I've had bug reports like this: "The RSS feed doesn't support UTF-8."

Well, of course it does. I have no idea what the person is seeing and why he reports this bug. I end up having to play 20 questions, which is a waste of my time and his.

In the end we get it narrowed down to the actual bug - which (for instance) is that the descriptions for a specific feed show as garbage characters rather than the expected characters. Imagine how it would have helped to know the URL of the feed and the specific problem in the first place!
The best bug reports follow this form:

1. What I did. (With as much specific detail as possible. Including URLs of feeds or URLs of weblogs when appropriate!)

2. What I expected to have happen. (Again, with detail.)

3. What actually happened. (With detail.)

Things like screen shots can really help, too - as long as you also use text to explain what's wrong.

(Why is step #2 important? Because some bugs are expectation bugs. That is, it's working fine, but you expected something else to happen. Expectation bugs sometimes point to a user interface design or documentation bug. But not always.)

One other thing that can be super helpful is sending crash logs or error reports if something goes wrong. This can be done by turning on "debug" in your Admin configuration page. Debug is useful because it lets me know what the software was actually doing. No guesswork - facts, which saves me tons of time.

Saving time with feature requests

Most people think they're like most other people most of the time.

And they're right - except when it comes to software.

The first thing to know when writing feature requests is that, despite what your intuition tells you, despite your experiences in the rest of your life, you are not the representative user. You are specifically you, an individual, with your own ideas and needs and wants. (It's a Good Thing! Don't be scared! I'm a doctor, and I'm here to help!)

So... let's imagine a feature: Tuesday Whipper-Snapping.

It may seem obvious that Tuesday Whipper-Snapping is a slam-dunk. Surely it's easy to do, surely every user wants Tuesday Whipper-Snapping, surely that would take the software to the next level - surely it's a bug, really, that Tuesday Whipper-Snapping isn't already in there.

Say I agree that Tuesday Whipper-Snapping is a good idea. I add it to the list: it's now the 347th good idea.

The trick, though, is getting me to think it's a super good idea.

The trick is not, as you might expect, to convince me that it's something lots of people would want. The trick is to tell me how you would use it, how it would benefit you, how it solves a problem that you have.

Forget about other people - let me do any extrapolating. (It's my job.) Instead, just tell me a great story about how this feature would be cool for you. (It goes without saying, by the way, that it's the "just one thing" you have to have. ;)

Also remember that, lots of times, software developers pay more attention to the problem being solved than to the exact feature being requested.

Think of Exposé - I doubt the folks at Apple had feature requests that read like this, "Please make it so that I hit a hot key and all my windows fly around and make it so I can mouse-over them and pick the one I want." Instead, they probably had feature requests like this: "Please add a global window menu to the Dock so I can more easily pick a window from any app." They probably didn't listen to that, but caught the problem, "I have so many windows open, piled up on top of each other, that I can't find the right one!".
So they listened to the problem and came up with another solution, one that probably nobody had requested specifically, but that is really cool.

Sometimes that happens, sometimes not: I'm just saying that telling a good story is important, because my goal is really to solve problem, not just implement specific requests.

If you tell me good, specific stories about you and the software and the problem you want to solve, then I'll know why the feature is important, and that makes it more likely I'll get to it sooner.

gr8 meetings ...

2007-06-05T15:24:00.000+05:30

Alas, I am only talking about business meetings, at work.

We usually meet for one of these reasons:

sharing information

defining issues

generating ideas

solving problems

making decisions

setting goals

gaining commitment

building teams, or

summarizing progress.

It helps if

everyone knows & agrees on purpose of meeting, upfront

everyone follows the process & best practises related to that purpose

Of course, there is no substitute for

coming prepared

on time

remaining focussed

leaving with actions that have owners/ completion dates

and a clean meeting room.

There is also no substitute for followups.

2 minute, motivator

2007-05-24T09:19:00.000+05:30

Ready to give your right arm, to motivate your team?

Worried that you are not reaching through to your reports?

Answer these two questions well and you would have done 80% of what you can actually do to motivate someone. Actually anyone. Yourself included!

Do remember that answering questions is not about telling. It is not about just you talking - and talking :).

Questions are answered best by dialog. When both parties are able put their arms around it - together.

Question 1: What is the big picture?

Question 2: Whats in it for me?

The right time to quit your job

2007-05-23T15:43:00.000+05:30

Perform this simple three way, 30 second, test. Ask yourself these 3 questions -

1. Am I learning?

2. Am I having fun?

3. Am I adding value?

If the answer to all three is NO (even two NOs is cause for concern) - then either it is time to fix it, or get out.

If you are in doubt, track your self-ratings on LF++ (on a scale of 1-5, rate yourself every week on how much you learnt, how much fun you had and how much value you added) for a few weeks.

L for the learning score. F for the fun score. ++ for the value add score.

What keeps you awake at night?

2007-05-22T14:27:00.000+05:30

So you want to catch the attention of someone who matters to you? Someone senior perhaps, who may not otherwise have the time for you. The magic words are, 'What keeps you awake at night?'

This is an attempt at the 'reverse elevator pitch'. In the normal course of things, the senior person asks you to demonstrate, your valuables, in 2 minutes or less. Here, you ask, 'What keeps you awake at night?'

Translated into action, there is proper magic in this question.

First, it is safe to assume that this someone is not awake at night, for interesting reasons s/he may not want to share with you :)

So, obviously, this question aims to learn what are his top concerns and issues. What bothers him so much that he can not even sleep at night because of this.

The real value of the answer for you lies in what you can do to address this concern. For you, this can be like a compass, that guides you what to do next.

Don't talk too much with this insight. Act on it. Show results. Or atleast show that you care enough to act.

This will get you the attention you were looking for. More importantly, this is education. Good free education.

For example, if you have asked your boss this question, then you will know what will keep you awake when you are the boss. And start preparing accordingly.

The elevator pitch

2007-05-18T08:40:00.000+05:30

The elevator pitch is an idea that was popularized during the peak of the dot-com era, when it seemed as if there were buckets of money out there to be had—and a lot of competition for having them.

The scenario goes like this: You’re on your way to a meeting on the 12th floor of the building. Then, just as you step into the elevator in the building lobby, the CEO of your company steps in with you.

“So,” he says, “what have you got for us today?” You’ve got a 30-second elevator ride to impress this guy and convince him that you are meant for bigger things in life.

What do you say?

You’re probably not going to get a six-figure investment from someone who thinks your idea is fabulous, but coming up with an elevator pitch is still a very useful exercise.

The important thing is not to create your elevator pitch on the fly. How about putting thought into it just now? You might also think of this as coming up with “100 words or less” to explain your idea. What it does. It's benefits.

Here are some things to think about when you’re coming up with your elevator pitch:

Short is better than long. A long and rambling elevator pitch probably means you haven’t really decided what you’re thinking yet.

Functionality trumps technology. Potential customers care about what your software will do. They usually don’t care how your software does it.

Solve a problem. If you can’t explain what problem your application will solve, customers won’t know why they should buy it.

Pitch the benefits, not yourself. Customers won’t be buying you, your superior knowledge, or your development team (if you’re lucky enough to be working with a team). They’ll be buying the idea.

Figure out what’s important to your audience, and make sure you address that. Are the people buying your product most interested in cost, innovation, features, compatibility, or something else entirely?

Murphy's Laws

2007-05-16T09:42:00.000+05:30

Nature abhors an optimist :). Expecting the worst helps avoid it (but not too much).

Identifying potential problems and strategies to address them if they occur can keep your project on track. Not Always. Only sometimes.

The basic law states, "If anything can go wrong, it will."

Below are some corollaries and application notes ;)

Impossibility - ... and even if it (murphy's law's subject) cannot, it might.

Complexity - Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

Duration - Everything takes longer than you expect.

Impact - If it is possible for several things to go wrong, the one that will go wrong first will be the one that will do the most damage. (Also known as the “butter side” rule: Bread always falls with the butter side down, especially when over a valuable carpet.)

Executives - A new device will work perfectly, over and over again, as long as no one important is watching. As soon as a demo for a high-level manager begins, the device will exhibit the worst possible failure mode. If a company founder is present, it will explode (the well-documented “Bill Hewlett” effect).

Trend - Left to themselves, things will always go from bad to worse.

Breakage - If you play with something long enough, you will break it.

Oversight - If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Flexibility - If you see that there are four possible ways in which things can go wrong and circumvent them, then a fifth way will probably develop.

Advantage - Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

Cruelty - Mother nature is arbitrary and capricious.

Foolproofing - It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.

Uninvolved - If a great deal of time has been spent seeking an answer to an apparently unsolvable problem, the solution will be obvious to the first unqualified person who looks at it.

Stress - Things get worse under pressure.

Ubiquity - When things go wrong somewhere, they are apt to go wrong everywhere.

Sequence - Whenever you need to do something, there is something you must do first (and something before that...).

Data analysis - In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct contain errors. Decimal points are usually misplaced. If an error can creep into any calculation, it will (and it will be in the direction that causes the most damage).

Lines - If there are several possible queues you can choose from, you will always pick the slowest.

Highways - If you are caught in traffic, you will be stuck in the slowest lane. If you switch to a lane moving faster, it will immediately stop and the lane you left will speed up.

Portables - Calculator and laptop computer batteries will fail at the most critical or disastrous times.

Airplanes - If you are early for a flight, the plane will be late. If you are running even slightly behind, the flight will depart exactly on time (or early).

Umbrellas - If you forget your umbrella, it will rain.

Socks - If odd socks can be created, they will be. The number of single socks in a drawer will approach the maximum.

Graphics - Whatever you seek on a map or large drawing will be in the most inconvenient, hard-to-find place (in a fold, near the edge, etc.).

Wisdom to know the difference

2007-05-15T10:14:00.000+05:30

Many years ago, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Such lack of wisdom could lead to disastrous consequence. Here is an Example

Radio conversation released by the chief of naval operations 10.10.95:

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision

Americans: This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No, I say again divert YOUR course.

Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS ENTERPRISE, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse.

Luckily, most of us in India, are in no such danger of being unable to accept things, we can not change.

We are an accepting, accomodating, flexible, adust-maadi bunch. We seldom express strong opinions. We - almost never - take stands. Push us in any which direction and we will happily bend and accomodate. Why else?

at home -

would we never write a 'letter to the editor'?

not call up BESCOM in an uscheduled power cut?

at work -

would we sit through meetings that have no relevance?

sit uncomplainingly through a telecon, when the audio quality makes it inaudible?

for our own career -

would we not think beyond software services?

would we not think beyond 'what it pays' - at the ripe old age of 30!

Best practices BS

2007-05-14T12:45:00.000+05:30

Three New Zealanders and three Aussies are traveling by train to a cricket match at the World Cup in England.At the station, the three Kiwis each buy a ticket and watch as the three Aussies buy just one ticket between them."How are the three of you going to travel on only one ticket?" asks one of the Kiwis.

"Watch and learn," answers one of the Aussies. They all board the train. The Kiwis take their respective seats but all three Aussies cram into a toilet and close the door behind them.

Shortly after the train has departed, the conductor comes around collecting tickets. He knocks on the toilet door and says, "Tickets please." The door opens just a crack and a single arm emerges with a ticket in hand. The conductor takes it and moves on.

The Kiwis see this and agree it was quite a clever idea. So after the game, they decide to copy the Aussies on the return trip and save some money (being clever with money, and all that). When they get to the station, they buy a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the Aussies don't buy a ticket at all!! "How are you all going to travel without any ticket?" says one perplexed Kiwi. "Watch and learn," answers an Aussie.

When they board the train the three Kiwis cram into a toilet and soon after the three Aussies cram into another nearby. The train departs. Shortly afterwards, one of the Aussies leaves the toilet and walks over to the toilet where the Kiwis are hiding. He knocks on the door and says, "Ticket please."

Best practises can be shared in two ways. 'Active Giving' and 'Active Receiving'.

'Active Giving' is the stuff the powerpoint presentations in senior management meetings is made up of. 'Active Giving' is what shows up in metrics reports. Someone smart is in the act of tallying up brownie points. This is not where we want to go.

The above example is 'Active Giving'. I am yet to see a successfully shared best practise - of the 'Active Giving' style.

'Active Receiving' is when you choose to pick it up. Not because it is thrust upon you. But because you see value in it.

'Active Receiving' makes the whole difference. Even the current dead-end tale can have some saving graces with 'Active Receiving'

So, what could the Kiwis now do, if they were to play an active role?

Perhaps they can claim they are 'aussies' when questioned by the train authorities (atleast the aussies get a bad name).

Or they can do some damage control. While two of them are still talking to the TTE, the 3rd one can go to the Aussie toilet and say, 'ticket please!' (then they pay fine, only for 2)

Finally, do some damage of their own - Walk the TTE to the aussie toilet and then watch the additional fun (and the aussies pay fine for 3)

euphemisms

2007-05-13T11:02:00.000+05:30

American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition describes
euphemism [(yooh-fuh-miz-uhm)] as:

An agreeable word or expression substituted for one that is potentially offensive, often having to do with bodily functions, sex, or death; for example, rest room for toilet, lady of the evening for prostitute. The Nazis used euphemism in referring to their plan to murder the world's Jews as “the Final Solution.”

Why do we use so many euphemisms in the business world? Today, it is a mark of arriving as a manager, when we start couching what we mean to say. Why do we do this?

Is it because the messenger gets shot, just for bringing in the bad news?

Is it because we *know* that authenticity at work is *not* welcome?

Is it because business success is a widely recognized ideal - to strive for - and anything about it, can not be less than perfect?

Our words are simply a reflection of what we have become. Of what we choose to be, for most of our waking and productive hours.

Maybe it is time to change this?

"COMPETITIVE SALARY"
We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors."JOIN OUR FAST-PACED COMPANY"
We have no time to train you.

"CASUAL WORK ATMOSPHERE"
We don't pay enough to expect that you'll dress up.

"MUST BE DEADLINE-ORIENTED"
You'll be six months behind schedule on your first day.

"SOME OVERTIME REQUIRED"
Some time each night and some time each weekend.

"DUTIES WILL VARY"
Anyone in the office can boss you around.

"MUST HAVE AN EYE FOR DETAIL"
We have no quality control.

"CAREER-MINDED"
Female Applicants must be childless (and remain that way).

"APPLY IN PERSON"
If you're old, fat or ugly you'll be told the position has been filled.

"NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE"
We've filled the job; our call for resumes is just a legal formality.

"SEEKING CANDIDATES WITH A WIDE VARIETY OF EXPERIENCE"
You'll need it to replace three people who just left.

"PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS A MUST"
You're walking into a company in perpetual chaos.

"REQUIRES TEAM LEADERSHIP SKILLS"
You'll have the responsibilities of a manager, without the pay or respect.

"GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS"
Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want and do it.

The case of the empty soapbox

2007-05-10T22:28:00.000+05:30

Let us look at a story on innovation for this post:

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soapbox, which happened in one of Japan 's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soapbox that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, once in a rare while one soapbox would through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.

Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to setup an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. They worked hard and they worked fast and they spent a huge amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with a more innovative solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan, pointed it at the assembly line and switched the fan on. As the empty soapboxes passed the fan, they were simply blown out of the line...
I think the first difference between the two was the availability of resources. Have you heard the old saying "Junk increases in volume to fill up the all available empty space". I believe it is similar with resources. If you have a lot of resources, you will spend a lot of resources. I currently work in IBM and I can see the difference between how we spend resources vs. how we used to when I was in a startup.

While in my startup, we were working on a pretty complex problem. During my period there, we ran into four major hurdles, each of which we crossed after significant effort. The first hurdle was related to a chipset that we were using. After having burned some 4 Lakhs (Rs) in coming up with the first prototype, we realized the chipset we were looking at just wouldn't scale. We subsequently solved the problem by selecting a different chipset. Sometime later we were told by an engineer we hired, that Motorola had walked down the same path and had burnt $ 8Million to get stuck at the same point we were. Look at the difference in money spent. I'm sure the 8M didn't mean much to a behemoth like Motorola but it would have made a world of difference to us.

To get the insight that you can "blow" away the empty box rather than "peer" into it with X-Rays, you need to understand the system in detail. You need to spend time and deep-dive into the problem. So you need to find problems that are worthy of being solved and not just any problem.

A related point. You need to ask the right question. Ask the wrong question "Is there soap in the box" and you get this huge X-Ray machine. But if you ask the right question "What different properties does the soap box have when it doesn't have soap inside it", will get you a diferent answer. So the question is really, how does one ask the right question.

I think the right question comes by first understanding the system, using a structured methodology to define the system - TRIZ provides a tool - the SU field analysis tool. It is not fool proof but is better than not having a tool.

Finally, I have one issue with this story. I would have looked for the reason why the soap-box was empty in the first place.

As usual, I look forward to your thoughts...

The Eagle

2007-05-08T08:56:00.000+05:30

The Eagle has the longest lifespan of its species.

It can live upto the age of 70 years. But to reach this age, the eagle must make a hard decision.

In its' 40's

Its' long and flexible talons can no longer grab prey which serves as food.

Its' long and sharp beak becomes bent.

Its' old aged and heavy wings, due to their thick feathers, become stuck to its' chest and make it difficult to fly.

Then the Eagle is left with only two options: die or go through a painful process of change which lasts 150 days.

The process requires that the Eagle fly to a mountain top and sit on its' nest.

There the Eagle knocks its' beak against a rock until it plucks it out. After plucking it out, the Eagle will wait for a new beak to grow back. Then it will pluck out its' talons.

When its' new talons grow back, the Eagle starts plucking its' old-aged feathers.

And after five months, the eagle takes its' famous flight of rebirth and lives for ... 30 more years.

Thanks to Sarala/ Smitha for sharing.

The man who planted trees

2007-05-03T20:41:00.000+05:30

I do not plan to draw any insights from this story. I will leave it to stand by itself. But this story has stayed with me and has shaped my thoughts for sometime now. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

---

For a human character to reveal truly exceptional qualities, one must have the good fortune to be able to observe its performance over many years. If this performance is devoid of all egoism, if its guiding motive is unparalleled generosity, if it is absolutely certain that there is no thought of recompense and that, in addition, it has left its visible mark upon the earth, then there can be no mistake.

About forty years ago I was taking a long trip on foot over mountain heights quite unknown to tourists in that ancient region where the Alps thrust down into Provence. All this, at the time I embarked upon my long walk through these deserted regions, was barren and colourless land. Nothing grew there but wild lavender.

I was crossing the area at its widest point, and after three days' walking found myself in the midst of unparalleled desolation. I camped near the vestiges of an abandoned village. I had run out of water the day before, and had to find some. These clustered houses, although in ruins, like an old wasps' nest, suggested that there must once have been a spring or well here. There was, indeed, a spring, but it was dry. The five or six houses, roofless, gnawed by wind and rain, the tiny chapel with its crumbling steeple, stood about like the houses and chapels in living villages, but all life had vanished.

It was a fine June day, brilliant with sunlight, but over this unsheltered land, high in the sky, the wind blew with unendurable ferocity. It growled over the carcasses of the houses like a lion disturbed at its meal. I had to move my camp.

After five hours' walking I had still not found water, and there was nothing to give me any hope of finding any. All about me was the same dryness, the same coarse grasses. I thought I glimpsed in the distance a small black silhouette, upright, and took it for the trunk of a solitary tree. In any case I started towards it. It was a shepherd. Thirty sheep were lying about him on the baking earth.

He gave me a drink from his watergourd and, a little later, took me to his cottage in a fold of the plain. He drew his water - excellent water from a very deep natural well above which he had constructed a primitive winch. The man spoke little. This is the way of those who live alone, but one felt that he was sure of himself, and confident in his assurance. That was unexpected in this barren country. He lived, not in a cabin, but in a real house built of stone that bore plain evidence of how his own efforts had reclaimed the ruin he had found there on his arrival. His roof was strong and sound. The wind on its tiles made the sound of the sea upon its shores.

The place was in order, the dishes washed, the floor swept, his rifle oiled; his soup was boiling over the fire. I noticed then that he was cleanly shaved, that all his buttons were firmly sewed on, that his clothing had been mended with the meticulous care that makes the mending invisible. He shared his soup with me and afterwards, when I offered my tobacco pouch, he told me that he did not smoke. His dog, as silent as himself, was friendly without being servile.

It was understood from the first that I should spend the night there; the nearest village was still more than a day and a half away. And besides I was perfectly familiar with the nature of the rare villages in that region. There were four or five of them scattered well apart from each other on these mountain slopes, among white oak thickets, at the extreme end of the wagon roads. They were inhabited by charcoal-burners, and the living was bad. Families, crowded together in a climate that is excessively harsh both in winter and in summer, found no escape from the unceasing conflict of personalities. Irrational ambition reached inordinate proportions in the continual desire for escape. The men took their wagonloads of charcoal to the town, then returned. The soundest characters broke under the perpetual grind. The women nursed their grievances. There was rivalry in everything, over the price of charcoal as over a pew in the church. And over all there was the wind, also ceaseless, to rasp upon the nerves. There were epidemics of suicide and frequent cases of insanity, usually homicidal.

The shepherd went to fetch a small sack and poured out a heap of acorns on the table. He began to separating the good from the bad. I smoked my pipe. I did offer to help him. He told me that it was his job. And in fact, seeing the care he devoted to the task, I did not insist. That was the whole of our conversation. When he had set aside a large enough pile of good acorns he counted them out by tens, meanwhile eliminating the small ones or those which were slightly cracked, for now he examined them more closely. When he had thus selected one hundred perfect acorns he stopped and he went to bed.

There was peace in being with this man. The next day I asked if I might rest here for a day. He found it quite natural - or to be more exact, he gave me the impression that nothing could startle him. The rest was not absolutely necessary, but I was interested and wished to know more about him. He opened the pen and led his flocks to pasture. Before leaving, he plunged his sack of carefully selected and counted acorns into a pail of water.

I noticed that he carried for a stick an iron rod as thick as my thumb and about a yard and a half long. Resting myself by walking, I followed a path parallel to his. His pasture was in a valley. He left the little flock in charge of the dog and climbed towards where I stood. I was afraid that he was about to rebuke me for my indiscretion, but it was not that at all: this was the way he was going, and he invited me to go along if I had nothing better to do. He climbed to the top of the ridge about a hundred yards away.

There he began thrusting his iron rod into the earth, making a hole in which he planted an acorn; then he refilled the hole. He was planting an oak tree. I asked him if the land belonged to him. He answered no. Did he know whose it was? He did not. He supposed people who cared nothing about it. He was not interested in finding out whose it was. He planted his hundred acorns with the greatest care. After the midday meal he resumed his planting. I suppose I must have been fairly insistent in my questioning, for he answered me. For three years he had been planting trees in this wilderness. He had planted 100,000. Of these, 20,000 had sprouted. Of the 20,000 he still expected to lose about half to rodents or to the unpredictable designs of Providence. There remained 10,000 oak trees to grow where nothing had grown before.

That was when I began to wonder about the age of this man. He was obviously over fifty. Fifty-five, he told me. His name was Elzeard Bouffier. He had once had a farm in the lowlands. There he had had his life. He had lost his only son, then his wife. He had withdrawn into this solitude, where his pleasure was to live leisurely with his lambs and his dog. It was his opinion that this land was dying for want of trees. He added that, having no very pressing business of his own, he had resolved to remedy this state of affairs.

Since I was at that time, in spite of my youth, leading a solitary life, I understood how to deal gently with solitary spirits. But my very youth forced me to consider the future in relation to myself and to a certain quest for happiness. I told him that in thirty years his 10,000 oaks would be magnificent. He answered quite simply that if God granted him life, in thirty years he would have planted so many more that these 10,000 would be like a drop of water in the ocean.

Besides, he was now studying the reproduction of beech trees and had a nursery of seedlings grown from beechnuts near his cottage. The seedlings, which he protected from his sheep with a wire fence, were very beautiful. He was also considering birches for the valleys where, he told me, there was a certain amount of moisture a few yards below the surface of the soil.

The next day we parted.

The following year came the War of 1914, in which I was involved for the next five years. An infantry-man hardly had time for reflecting upon trees. To tell the truth, the thing itself had made no impression upon me; I had considered it as a hobby, a stamp collection, and forgotten it.

The war over, I found myself possessed of a tiny demobilisation bonus and a huge desire to breathe fresh air for a while. It was with no other objective that I again took the road to the barren lands.

The countryside had not changed. However, beyond the deserted village I glimpsed in the distance a sort of greyish mist that covered the mountaintops like a carpet. Since the day before, I had begun to think again of the shepherd tree-planter. "Ten thousand oaks," I reflected, "really take up quite a bit of space." I had seen too many men die during those five years not to imagine easily that Elzeard Bouffier was dead, especially since, at twenty, one regards men of fifty as old men with nothing left to do but die. He was not dead. As a matter of fact he was extremely spry. He had changed jobs. Now he had only four sheep but, instead, a hundred beehives. He had got rid of the sheep because they threatened his trees. For, he told me (and I saw for myself'), war had disturbed him not at all. He had imperturbably continued to plant.

The oaks of 1910 were then ten years old and taller than either of' us. It was an impressive spectacle. I was literally speechless and, as he did not talk, we spent the whole day walking in silence through his forest. In three sections, it measured eleven kilometers in length and three kilometers at its greatest width. When you remembered that all this had sprung from the hands and the soul of this one man, without technical resources, you understand that men could be as effectual as God in realms other than that of destruction.

He had pursued his plan, and beech trees as high as my shoulder, spreading out as far as the eye could reach, confirmed it. He showed me handsome clumps of birch planted five years before - that is, in 1915, when I had been fighting at Verdun. He had set them out in all the valleys where he had guessed - and rightly - that there was moisture almost at the surface of the ground. They were as delicate as young girls, and very well established.

Creation seemed to come about in a sort of chain reaction. He did not worry about it; he was determinedly pursuing his task in all its simplicity, but towards the village I saw water brooks that had been dry since the memory of man. This was the most impressive result of chain reaction that I had seen. These dry streams had once, long ago, run with water. Some of the dreary villages I mentioned before had been built on the sites of ancient Roman settlements, traces of which still remained; and archaeologists, exploring there, had found fishhooks where, in the twentieth century, cisterns were needed to assure a small supply of water.

The wind, too, scattered seeds. As the water reappeared, so there reappeared willows, rushes, meadows, gardens, flowers, and a certain purpose in being alive. But the transformation took place so gradually that it became part of the pattern without causing any astonishment. Hunters, climbing into the wilderness in pursuit of hares or wild boar, had of course noticed the sudden growth of little trees, but had attributed it to some caprice of' the earth. That is why no one meddled with Elzeard Bouffier's work. If he had been detected he would have had opposition. He was undetectable. Who in the villages or in the administration could have dreamed of such perseverance in a magnificent generosity?

To have anything like a precise idea of this exceptional character one must not forget that he worked in total solitude: so total that, towards the end of his life, he lost the habit of speech. Or perhaps it was that he saw no need for it.

In 1933 he received a visit from a forest ranger who notified him of an order against lighting fires out of' doors for fear of endangering the growth of this natural forest. It was the first time, the man told him naively, that he had ever heard of a forest growing of its own accord. At that time Bouffier was about to plant beeches at a spot some twelve kilometers from his cottage. In order to avoid travelling back and forth - for he was then seventy-five - he planned to build a stone cabin right at the plantation. The next year he did so.

In 1935 a whole delegation came from the Government to examine the "natural forest." There was a high official from the Forest Service, a Deputy, technicians. There was a great deal of ineffectual talk. It was decided that something must be done and, fortunately, nothing was done except the only helpful thing: the whole forest was placed under the protection of the State, and charcoal burning prohibited. For it was impossible not to be captivated by the beauty of those young trees in the fullness of health, and they cast their spell over the Deputy himself.

A friend of mine was among the forestry officers of the delegation. To him I explained the mystery. One day the following week we went together to see Elzeard Bouffier. We found him hard at work, some ten kilometers from the spot where the inspection had taken place.

This forester was not my friend for nothing. He was aware of values. He knew how to keep silent. I delivered the eggs I had brought as a present. We shared our lunch among the three of us and spent several hours in wordless contemplation of the countryside.

In the direction from which we had come the slopes were covered with trees twenty to twenty-five feet tall. I remembered how the land had looked in 1913: a desert . . . Peaceful, regular toil, the vigorous mountain air, frugality and, above all, serenity in the spirit had endowed this old man with awe-inspiring health. He was one of God's athletes. I wondered how many more acres he was going to cover with trees.

Before leaving my friend simply made a brief suggestion about certain species of trees that the soil here seemed particularly suited for. He did not force the point, "for the very good reason," he told me later, "that Bouffier knows more about it than I do." At the end of an hour's walking having turned it over in his mind - he added, "He knows a lot more about it than anybody. He's discovered a wonderful way to be happy!"

It was thanks to this officer that not only the forest but also the happiness of the man was protected. He delegated three rangers to the task, and so terrorised them that they remained proof against all the bottles of wine the charcoal-burners could offer.

The only serious danger to the work occurred during the War of 1939. As cars were being run on gazogenes (wood-burning generators), there was never enough wood. Cutting was started among the oaks of 1910, but the area was so far from any railway that the enterprise turned out to be financially unsound. It was abandoned. The shepherd had seen nothing of it. He was thirty kilometers away, peacefully continuing his work, ignoring the war of 1939 as he had ignored that of 1914.

I saw Elzeard Bouffier for the last time in June of 1945. He was then eighty-seven. I had started back along the route through the wastelands; but now, in spite of the disorder in which the war had left the country, there was a bus running between the Durance Valley and the mountain. I attributed the fact that I no longer recognised the scenes of my earlier journeys to this relatively speedy transportation. It took the name of a village to convince me that I was actually in that region that had been all ruins and desolation.

The bus put me down at Vergons. In 1913 this hamlet of ten or twelve houses had three inhabitants. They had been savage creatures, hating one another, living by trapping game, little removed, physically and morally, from the conditions of prehistoric man. All about them nettles were feeding upon the remains of abandoned houses. Their condition had been beyond hope. For them, nothing but to await death - a situation which rarely predisposes to virtue.

Everything was changed. Even the air. Instead of the harsh dry winds that used to attack me, a gentle breeze was blowing, laden with scents. A sound like water came from the mountains; it was the wind in the forest; most amazing of all, I heard the actual sound of water falling into a pool. I saw that a fountain had been built, that it flowed freely and - what touched me most - that someone had planted a linden beside it, a linden that must have been four years old, already in full leaf, the incontestable symbol of resurrection.

Besides, Vergons bore evidence of labor at the sort of undertaking for which hope is required. Hope, then, had returned. Ruins had been cleared away, dilapidated walls torn down and five houses restored. Now there were twenty-eight inhabitants, four of them young married couples. The new houses, freshly plastered, were surrounded by gardens where vegetables and flowers grew in orderly confusion, cabbages and roses, leeks and snapdragons, celery and anemones. It was now a village where one would like to live.

From that point I went on foot. The war just finished had not allowed the full blooming of life, but Lazarus was out of the tomb. On the lower slopes of the mountain I saw little fields of barley and rye; deep in that narrow valley the meadows were turning green.

It has taken only the eight years since then for the whole countryside to glow with health and prosperity. On the site of the ruins I had seen in 1913 now stand neat farms, cleanly plastered, testifying to a happy and comfortable life. The old streams, fed by the rains and snows that the forest conserves, are flowing again. Their waters have been channeled. On each farm, in groves of maples, fountain pools overflow on to carpets of fresh mint. Little by little the villages have been rebuilt. People from the plains, where land is costly, have settled here, bringing youth, motion, the spirit of adventure. Along the roads you meet hearty men and women, boys and girls who understand laughter and have recovered a taste for picnics. Counting the former population, unrecognisable now that they live in comfort, more than 10,000 people owe their happiness to Elzeard Bouffier.

When I reflect that one man, armed only with his own physical and moral resources, was able to cause this land of Canaan to spring from the wasteland, I am convinced that, in spite of everything, humanity is admirable. But when I compute the unfailing greatness of spirit and the tenacity of benevolence that it must have taken to achieve this result, I am taken with an immense respect for that old and unlearned peasant who was able to complete a work worthy of God.

Elzeard Bouffier died peacefully in 1947 at the hospice in Banon.

Working across groups - are you smiling together at the pain?

2007-05-03T10:43:00.000+05:30

Perhaps you also quietly wondered whether in the year 2007 it is still our collective business to wonder what shows up on Mandira's saree. Or for that matter under it. Is this the India, I am dreaming of being global in 13 years from now?

We are being called upon more and more to succeed across groups. Our success depends only in part on things in our direct control. Things that may still be mired in a mess, on the other side.

The pre-condition to solving some of these is to be able to smile at them. There is magic in not taking ourselves too seriously. The magic becomes bigger when both sides across the fence can do it together.

This is a magic - we need badly. For - we indians - take ourselves too seriously.

(this is the magic that heheha also wants to create ;) )

Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Qantas' pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.

By the way Qantas is the only major US Australian/Asian airline that has never, ever, had an accident.

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what friction locks are for.

P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

And the best one for last..................

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget.

The cracked pot

2007-04-30T15:00:00.000+05:30

A water bearer in India had two large pots; each hung on each end of a pole, which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master's house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots of water to his master's house. Of course the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you."

"Why?" asked the bearer. "What are you ashamed of?"

"I have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load due to this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your master's house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don't get full value from your efforts," the pot said.

The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in his compassion he said, "As we return to the master's house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path."

Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some. But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure.

The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of your path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from he stream, you've watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master's table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house."

Here are my insights.

First: If you think/analyze, you can take a flaw and convert it to your advantage. Like the water bearer you need to think and think outside your box. It was not the water bearer's job to bring flowers. He needn't have cared, but he did. He cared enough to convert the flaw of the pot to his advantage.

Should we care? Have you heard the saying "If you want to build a beautiful boat, build a yearning for the sea amongst the builders". If they think of the sea all the time, they will find ways and means of building a far better boat as compared to someone who is focussed on constructing a boat. Even better, they will keep improving. How do we leverage this within ourselves to get better at what we do. What do you yearn for?

How do you convert a flaw into an advantage. It's about analyzing and implementing - a.k.a innovating. Here's a tool from TRIZ that will help you step outside your box. It's called the 9 windows operator.
The following is an example of applying the 9 windows operator to designing pens. This is the compressed version of the original image from here.

This story is a simplistic application of the tool. We just need to consider the super-system in the present. Let us see:

Super system: The path, the river, the water bearer, the pots, the master's house, the walk to the master's house, the desire to do a bit more, to go beyond.

So let us look at the super system. This is a box of all the various boxes. Look at all the components within this box. It is then that the links between the desire to thank the master and do something more, the fact that water drips from the pot on bare ground for a large distance and the fact that something could be planted on that strip of earth emerges. A little more planning and the water bearer could perhaps even do a vegetable garden, thus adding even more value.

Second insight: Look at the problem and the solution. The solution was innovative from the perspective of the pot since the pot would have found it very difficult to think outside it's box - i.e. that of carrying water. However the water bearer could since his box was much much larger than the pot's box - because of his yearning to do better for the master than just bringing water for him. The pot was only one component in the water bearer's box. Two things here. Thinking out of the box is really about thinking within a much larger box, where your current box is just a component. You can still think within your box and be innovative.

Third insight: Success and failure are relative terms. It depends on how the failure is contextualized. If the failure can be utilized first of all your system becomes more effective and secondly you can think beyond the pain of knowing you were a failure. To do this, you need to think out of a much larger box - the ecosystem of your organization, your family. Look at every problem, issue you have within your circle of influence. Can you convert this into an advantage? Try, it may make your life easier...

I'll write more about TRIZ and innovation in a future post. I find it a fascinating tool and have used it effectively. Again, I would like to read and understand your insights.

Fixing global warming

2007-04-29T11:15:00.000+05:30

Is that so...

2007-04-26T11:01:00.000+05:30

Hi everyone,

Let me introduce myself first. My name is Rinka Singh mail: rinka dot singh at gmail dot com. I have been a developer, a software manager and an unsuccessful entrepreneur. I currently work in IBM as a Manager. Going forward, I will definitely take the entrepreneurship path again - :-) It's addictive. I have also contributed to SPIN Bangalore for a while now. I've not been able to contribute as much as I've wanted to in the recent past but some day...

I've had a lot of successes and failures as part of my growth. Both have contributed to making the person I am. It's been a fun ride and I look forward to see what the future holds. I would like use this blog to share my insights and in turn learn from you. Please post your thoughts. The more you respond, the more we all will learn and grow.

Brij, thank you for inviting me to post. I know my posts will be different from yours - personality differences, yet we resonate on thoughts and issues and I think I am going to have a fun time.

Let's start off with a story:

Once upon a time, there was a Chinese farmer in the Yuan Province. He had a handsome young son. The people around him would complement him on his son's looks and bearing and he would reply "Is that so".

One day, a herd of wild horses broke in and vandalized his farm. His neighbours came by and commiserated with him on his bad luck. The farmer replied "Is that so". The next day, the farmer's son and two other farm hands followed the wild horses and caught some 15 of them. They brought them back to the farm and put them in the corral. People were happy at this turn of events and congratulated the farmer on his good luck. He replied "Is that so".

The son decided to break the horses and sell them in the market. A month later, one of the wild horses threw the son and he broke his leg. The fracture was bad and the son had to stay in bed for almost a month. People came by and commiserated the farmer on his ill-fortune. He replied "Is that so".

A month later, war broke out with the neighbouring kingdom. The King's soldiers swept through the country enlisting all able bodied men to serve in the army. They also got to the farmer's village and picked up almost every able bodied man. However, they did not pick the farmer's son since he could hardly walk. People came by and congratulated the farmer on his great luck. He replied "Is that so".

Sooooo.....
Look within yourself... What was your reaction as you read the first paragraph? What was it when you read the second one? How does this story link to your world? Please share your insights. Please remember, there is no right or wrong. What you respond is true from your perspective and it might bring a different perspective to someone else. Please remember, the more we share, the more we learn from each other. Sharing is crucial.

Let me share my insights from this story. The insights I took away were as follows:
First, there is nothing good or bad, right or wrong. All right or wrong is in context of the environment we live in. An example: We consider stealing as bad. But there were American Indian societies where the most respected person was the best thief. Imagine living in such a society. How would you feel? What are the bars around your perceptions?

My second insight. As we work, live, we have successes and failures. We usually attribute them to things within our control - like our skills, our personality, our resources. Successes and failures also have a large component of things that are either partially in our control or not under our control - like other people we work/interact with, the ecosystem we are in and plain vanilla luck or ill-luck. Our stresses, pressures are primarily because we think we have control on things that we actually don't have control and we attempt to control the uncontrollable.

This was validated by a recent study that showed that we tend to attribute our successes to our capabilities and our failures to the environment around us when a lot more of the outcomes were because of the environment or because of random fluctuations.

I think the ability to recognize the difference is important. I realized there is nothing like being lucky or unlucky. It is a combination of random fluctuation and our efforts to to manage these. Success is all about understanding the UCL (upper control limits) and the LCL (lower control limits) of the fluctuations and having as many answers as possible AND more importantly just doing it. The Americanism "Ready, fire, Aim" holds true.

Another insight. Let's take Investments as an example. We see a lot of fluctuations in the market. Sometimes we make money, sometimes we lose money. So how do we get "lucky". Look at it this way, losing money has value too - You can offset your losses against taxes and if you can learn from the failure. How do you learn - you analyze, discuss to understand what you could have done differently. But then the question I would ask - was your analysis right? How do you know? How do you know you won't take a loss again? You cannot since you can't predict the future. But does that mean you shouldn't analyze - I would say not because if you didn't you would never learn and your rate of making mistakes wouldn't go down. This is also where the "Ready fire Aim" comes in.

What do you think. I would like your thoughts on the story and my insights. Do write, I will summarize your inputs for the next time I write. Please remember, the more you participate the more diversity we will have and the value will be greater for all of us.

Is lying dishonest?

2007-04-24T14:38:00.000+05:30

A young businessman had just started his own firm. He rented a beautiful office and had it furnished with antiques. Sitting there, he saw a man come into the outer office. Wishing to appear the hot shot, the businessman picked up the phone and started to pretend he had a big deal working.He threw huge figures around and made giant commitments. Finally he hung up and asked the visitor, "Can I help you?"

The man said, "Yeah, I've come to activate your phone lines."

Resolving to surprise her husband, an executive's wife stopped by his office. She found him with his secretary sitting in his lap.

Without hesitating, he dictated, "...and in conclusion, gentlemen, shortage or no shortage, I cannot continue to operate this office with just one chair.

Me asks -

which of the two is a greater sin?

portraying a goal falsely (wanting to appear big, as in 1st story) or

portrarying the process falsely (I was just managing with one chair!! yeah! yeah! we know)

is false portrayal itself an act of dishonesty or is it simply a symptom of something deeper? what?

when we call lying as 'false portrayal', is that lying too?

bandar - a'kela nahin hai!

2007-04-22T19:23:00.000+05:30

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. After awhile, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result. Pretty soon, when any monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs.

Why not?

Because that's the way it's always been around here. And that's how monkeys are!

But are they the only ones who do this? :)

PTFW

2007-04-19T19:11:00.000+05:30

It is important to 'plan the week' ahead.

I have learnt that if I am going to be in the driving seat with my time,
I need to plan ahead.

I have also learnt that I can never completely plan the week
(10-12 hours with plan, rest of the week unstructured - works best for me)

I have also learnt that I can never be accurate with my limited plans

(shit happens!).

I have learnt that it still makes royal sense to plan my week ahead. The
real villain is - my laziness.

I have grown fat and lazy. I like to sit in the sun and recall past
glories. I do not like to put my small weekly plans into action.

Thank God! for Fate. Fate is kind.

It has brought me to a place where I am useless enough to not add any
type of real value.

It has made me disposable and dispensable.

Who is there behind my back? Someone faster, cheaper, better?

It is now therefore urgent to 'plan the week' ahead.

I'd say, 'Plan That Week' while there is still time.

balle balle

2007-04-19T18:57:00.002+05:30

emptee me puh-leez
gimme beginners mind.
non-stop bhangra!

BHAG

2007-04-18T12:16:00.000+05:30

Ofcourse, Big Hairy Audacious Goals sound good. It does not mean you are not afraid.

Mountaineer Todd Skinner said (Anju thanks!) -

“If you are not afraid, you have probably chosen too easy a mountain. To be worth the expedition, it had better be intimidating. If you don’t stand at the base uncertain how to reach the summit, then you have wasted the effort to get there.

A mountain well within your ability is not only a misspending of resources, it is a loss of opportunity across a life time of potential achievement.”

Todd Skinner (October 27, 1958 – October 23, 2006) was an American free climber who died in a fall at Yosemite National Park on October 23, 2006. His climbing achievements included the first free ascents of many routes and the world's first free ascent of a grade 7 climb.

PS: If you are still afraid, 'BHAG' (in hindi) also means, 'to run away' :)

Choose well, before you invest in making a change ...

2007-04-16T09:49:00.000+05:30

One fine day, a bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus, and drove off along the route. No problems for the first few stops - a few people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well.

At the next stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet eight, built like a wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver and said, "Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.

Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically meek? Well, he was. Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't happy about it. The next day the same thing happened - Big John got on again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down. And the next day, and the next! .

This grated on the bus driver, who started losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him. Finally he could stand it no longer. He signed up for body building courses, karate, judo, and all that good stuff.

By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong; what's more, he felt really good about himself. So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus and said, "Big John doesn't pay!"

The driver stood up, glared back at the passenger, and screamed, "And why not?" With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, "Big John has a bus pass."

(thanks to Sarala for sharing)

Beyond skiing between the trees

2007-04-12T10:30:00.000+05:30

Skiers - learning the sport - are taught to focus on the empty spaces as they ski past the trees. Any focus instead, on the trees, usually leads to an unpleasant intimate meeting.

Cricket coaches also have similar advise for the shotmakers. Focus on the empty spaces, not the fielders.

Yet, at work - we still continue to focus on the issues. On problems that need to be fixed. The whole mindset is to find and fix problems so that, 'it ain't broke anymore'. We don't look at the opportunity spaces, as keenly as we should.

How do we look at the opportunity spaces, at work?

One way is to look at what is already working well. Then look for how more of the same can be done: easier; cheaper; faster; better.

Good leaders do do this, mostly on bright sunny days. However, more often than not they carry this burden alone and haltingly. Almost everyone else is busy fixing problems - or keeping them hidden.

There is a huge opportunity to involve the larger organization. Everyone can look for what is working well and then build on it.

Humans have 3 needs, that are best satisfied at the workplace- Have a voice and be heard; Be viewed as essential to a group; and Be seen as unique and exceptional.

Cooperrider - the father of appreciative enquiry - wrote, "We have found that when people in organizations become frustrated or cynical, it is always because the organization is not fully respectful of the three universal human needs. In our experience, most organizations will tell you they practice these principles, but in reality they do not. They are deceptively simple. You can make a difference by monitoring who you listen to and who you ignore and asking yourself why. What assumptions have you made about people or their positions that cause you to listen or tune out?"

You can make a difference in creating a more constructive culture at your organization by:

1. Being curious about how every other person sees the world;

2. Respecting each person’s perspective of the world as unique and essential to the group’s success; and

3. Making sure every person has a chance to speak and be heard.

This is the path of appreciative enquiry. It aligns the group along the lines of positive constructive energy. It can get things done - happily!

Try making this the theme of your one-on-ones. Keep the dialog real by focussing on real situations where your partners successes become the starting point. See where it takes you. Observe the positive energy you generate.

Some starting questions to ask are:

Describe a time when you feel the team/group performed really well. What were the circumstances during that time?

Describe a time when you were proud to be a member of the team/group. Why were you proud?

What do you value most about being a member of this team/group? Why?

Try sitting in a circle in an offsite. Swap work related success stories where the team did well. Enjoy the 'feel good' but don't just stop there. Use the dialog to arrive at how more of the same can be done: easier; cheaper; faster; better.

A conversation amongst equals ...

2006-10-24T11:17:00.000+05:30

George Bush was sitting in his office wondering whom to invade next when his telephone rang.

"Hallo, Mr. Bush!" a heavily accented voice said, "This is Gurmukh from Phagwara, District Kapurthala, Punjab. I am ringing to inform you that we are ophicially declaring the war on you!"

"Well, Gurmukh," Bush replied, "This is indeed important news! How big is your army"

"Right now," said Gurmukh, after a moment's calculation, "there is myself, my cousin Sukhdev, my next door neighbour Harjit, and the whole kabaddi team from the gurudwara. That makes eight of us"

Bush paused. "I must tell you, Gurmukh that I have one million men in my army waiting to move on my command."

"Arrey O, main kya.. ," said Gurmukh. "I'll have to ring you back!"

Sure enough, the next day, Gurmukh called again.

"Mr. Bush, it is Gurmukh, I'm calling from Phagwara STD, the war is still on! We have managed to get some more inphantry equipment!"

"And what equipment would that be, Gurmukh," Bush asked.

"Well, we have two combines, a donkey and Harjit's tractor."

Bush sighed. "I must tell you, Gurmukh, that I have 16,000 tanks and 14,000 armored personnel carriers. Also, I've increased my army to 1-1/2 million since we last spoke."

"Oh teri ...." said Gurmukh. "I'll have to get back to you."

Sure enough, Gurmukh rang again the next day.

"Mr. Bush, the war is still on! We have managed to get ourselves airborne...... We've modified Harjit's tractor by adding a couple of shotguns, sticking on some wings and the pind's generator. Four school pass boys from Malpur have also joined us."

Bush was silent for a minute and then cleared his throat. "I must tell you, Gurmukh, that I have 10,000 bombers and 20,000 fighter planes. My military complex is surrounded by laser-equiped, surface-to-air missile sites. And since we last spoke, I've increased my army to TWO MILLION!"

"Tera pala hove...." said Gurmuk, "I'll have to ring you back."

Sure enough, Gurmukh called again the next day.

"Kiddan, Mr. Bush! I am sorry to tell you that we have had to call off the war."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Bush. "Why the sudden change of heart," may I ask?

"Well," said Gurmukh, "we've all had a long chat over a couple of lassi's, and decided there's no way we can feed two million prisoners ofwar!"

---
:) Thanks to Dinesh for sharing!

Happy Dipawali ...

2006-10-23T16:29:00.001+05:30

Sri M, suggested yesterday in a talk on Bhagwatam, that Ramayana - the parable - reflects real life. Below are some conjectures I ended up making … :)

Ramayana Incident	Real life Equivalent
Golden Lanka	This birth
Rama, Sita	Striving Self, Desire
Ravana	Ego (eventually destroyed)
Sita held captive by Ravana	Root cause of this ~~problem~~ play. Desire held captive by Ego.
Monkeys	Undisciplined thoughts
Building a bridge across the ocean	Disciplined thoughts
Hanuman	Originally Vayu Putra (thoughts are as nebulous as the wind)His identify arose from seeing Sita as Mother - was born of Deep desire. Also, he was servant to Active Striving (Sri Rama).
Hanuman’s reconnaissance of Golden Lanka	All things are created twice. Before anything can be realized (victory over Ravana, redeeming Sita), it must first be visualized clearly. One big clearly focussed idea!
Prime theme: separation	The being is separated from the divine and it yearns to return back
Ravana’s abduction of Sita	Ego identifies itself with desires. When ego is thus bound by desires, the being becomes ineffective (fear, inaction), no matter how learned or evolved
Lord Rama came to Sita. Sita waited steadfastly.	Feminine principle: Desire to connect back. Masculine principle: Active striving to connect back. (Both are needed by the being to reconnect back to divine)

Best Wishes for Dipawali. The celebration of the being, coming back home!

This is what I want to do, when I grow up ...

2006-10-12T17:14:00.000+05:30

Times are a changing.

Gone is the need for a lifetime of job security. I do not know where I will retire from. Nor do I care. I do not even count my Provident Fund balance as keenly as my father did. This does not mean that I am ready to retire!

Gone is the notion that senior is superior. After a while designations don't seem to matter so much. More so, when my junior today, can easily be my supervisor tomorrow, if s/he is willing to pay the price with long hours, inconvenient travel, nightly telecons and stress. This does not mean I am not in the race (I may not be in your race, though :))

I am seen for the the value I bring to the table. If I am a doer then it is my skills. If I am a manager, then it is my ability to manage the mismatch.

In turn, I too tilt my head to a side and try to listen to the drumbeat coming from faraway. Only I am around to take care of the children and sick parents. My involvement in a charity is demanding more. I am sure if I don't go to Mansarovar this year, then I never will. I want to explore my spiritual side.

There is a good chance that a good scorecard on one of these will matter more to me in a few years from now. The promotion and the salary hike can wait. Or someone else will give them to me anyways.

When this is the person I am, then what motivates me - and keeps me motivated - also changes

a chance to work part-time but with full commitment and accountability. Variants may range from - part of the day; to part of the year.

a chance to build skill and demonstrate skill. A chance to be a craftsman - and pursue mindless excellence - for its own sake.

a chance to work on tasks that matter. Just because I am around only part of the week, does not mean I am less loyal or less committed or less interested (remember, I am good at what I do).

sufficient investment from your side, in giving me the big picture. I said I wanted part-time, not peice-meal :)

Are you listening, dear employer? Some business schools are talking about it too. This may be the workforce of tomorrow. Especially those, who are the capable ones.

know thyself ...

2006-10-12T09:44:00.000+05:30

It all begins with being able to see what I was unable to see previously. Whatever the change that I want to make in my life, it can only begin when I am willing to see things as they are. This is so true in our relationships with others.

Arbinger Institute has dedicated itself to this cause and my friend Nagendra represents them in India. He invited me to their introductory seminar and below is what I picked up during the day.

The core is about engaging from the heart. Treating everyone as an individual rather than an object. Coming from a western perspective, a large part of the day is dedicated to a cerebral realization of this. Senthiyl - the singapore facilitator - walked the talk from the word 'go'! He reached out to everyone of the 30 participants with their 1st names (awesome memory!)

When we trick ourselves into not doing things that we KNOW we should be doing, we setup a negative chain reaction. (using our ever fertile minds) We justify our incorrect actions to ourselves and in the process put the blame on someone else. This self justifying image continues because it lets us live with our deception. The price we pay is the inability to see and worse, creating blame and passing it on. This - they call - 'being in a box'.

When we are in the box it is not possible to realize our faulty logic. The way out is to realize first that we are in the box. The workshop aims to help us realize what our typical 'box situations' are. It goes a step further and helps us to link feelings and images to the box situation. The assumption probably is that it is easier to relate to a feeling or an image and - when we are able to do so while still in the thick of things - use that as a trigger to snap out of the box.

When we manage to snap out of it a few times, it becomes easier. The trick is to remain ever mindful, of the feelings our body experiences or of images that flash in our minds (when we are in the box) and use these to realize, 'what a jackass I am!' (senthiyl's phrase :))

Though the framework is primarily a personal growth tool, it does have corporate applications. The last thing anyone wants is to be in a box with respect to the boss (yes it is possible to be in the box with respect to one person, but not others). The two sides - boss versus me is never on the win-win path. Predictably, the best way out is to compare notes with someone who is not in the box with either of the two sides.

A whole team may be actively involved in self justifications and passing the blame. A common language and a combined desire to break free - can do wonders. Remember the story of a number of birds who flew away with the net, leaving the hunter very surprised and hungry!

There are other personal growth tools that start from connected-ness or accepting the I or being in the present moment. In many ways they are slightly different paths to the same goal. Accepting Myself. Accepting Others. Working Together. All rely on mindfulness to realize a faulty state - and therefore snapping out of it.

More than the method it is the awareness. Awareness comes from desire (to be aware). You have to have the desire to treat the other person, as you would yourself. The value of the tool depends on this.

An incubator for creating jobs

2006-09-10T17:39:00.000+05:30

The simplest assumption is that jobs can be created by building skills in those who need the job. They in turn, invade and adjust the markets, with their new found skills. The crux is the continuous engagement with the ecosystem - something that education struggles to do with its 'take it or leave it' stance.

To make job creation more effective, it is useful to look at the following framework and create an incubator, that provides all these --

bheja shor karta hai

Moving to http://1on1.in

Creating collaborative Content

Net present value of an individual

my checklist for desgning learning modules

Creating Sustainability Awareness

Climbing out of the hole that 'tragedy of commons' dug!

Some water facts - India

The 'Repair' thread - E Learning for sustainability

What is a 3 quarters manager?

Organizing my eSpace

Learning to learn better

pdf is my format of choice, for digital content

getting things done

solutions to help community managers collect funds

community managers are real people, with commitment

community managers - a new role at work, for sustainability

From the heart

the green android

He was the grand-daddy of us all!

A paratha well earned

words are cheap

accepting pain

persuation

Destination

Work life balance

Getting started

Happy Independence Day

Universal embrace

Access Denied

Learning to Learn

Parallels to the Matrix

tags for my blog

same same same

same stab of fearsame surge of joysame same sameskins separate the same

I saw you doing,scenes of my deja-vu.Are we one or two?

Personal Transformation

Inside I Shovel,To rid me, of my muck.

May I dump it here?

How to become a vegetarian

for me to eat meat,let me watch the killing

pass the veggies pleez!

The key to time management

plan the week,measure changes desired.

Ever caught time?

Sir said ...

eat drink OK.sleep is samadhi key,just watch it

Books waiting to be written

What they *do* teach you, in school...

Is there a compass in use?

renewable energy - an inconvenient truth

Facilitating innovation

Enabling systems in place

Customer aware Researchers

Upstream focus on business value

Unfinished business

about collaborative development frameworks

Rules for being human

Does your resume add up?

'speed dating' to dive to the heart of issues

Amateur photo shoot (outbound activity)

beginnings

Go take a break

What is Program Management

Why be a program manager?

Dilemmas faced by managers of IT comapanies

Black box magic for program managers

Leadership Tips (short movie)

The Bengaluru CEO - what is keeping her awake?

The new perimeter of social interaction

Towards shared accountability and rewarding micro-contributions

my intent

My subject matter expertise

improving face-to-face meetings with online tools

Giving feedback

the role model for trainers

tighten your belts ...

checking attrition - a program for managers

the Case Method

Learning should be fun - lessons from food

same stab of fear
same surge of joy
same same same

skins separate the same

I saw you doing,
scenes of my deja-vu.

Are we one or two?

Inside I Shovel,
To rid me, of my muck.

for me to eat meat,
let me watch the killing

plan the week,
measure changes desired.

eat drink OK.
sleep is samadhi key,
just watch it

What they do teach you, in school...

emptee me puh-leez
gimme beginners mind.
non-stop bhangra!