Putting first things first

It's been a long while that I've posted something. Lack of time, but more importantly there was a lack of coherent train of thoughts which would usually generate enough content for a blog post.

The last year and a half have been really busy. Traffic has come back to normal, which means that I am spending significant amount of time driving around, especially while driving back from office. I do take the ocassional Metro ride, but for the majority of the days, I make best of this time while driving to listen to audio versions of books on Audible. A few of the good books that I'd recommend. 

In my role at work, I need to spend significant time at work in talking to people. While some of it is with partners, much of it is with my team members with whom I need to have my influence for continued success of my teams, and mine as well. This also gives me the opportunity to have interesting conversations with colleagues who may not be reporting into me, but find it useful to have that talk with me. 

And this post is a byproduct of 2 such conversations in the past few weeks.

Managing Time, and Priorities!

While there are many things which may be in our circle of concern which we should learn to accept, we should always arrive to change what's in our circle of influence. Slowly but surely we also need to make this circle of influence bigger as well.

To manage time better, discipline and self control are essential. We could maximise productive time at work, one could work in silence by starting work early. 

To do this, one needs to wake up early, for which one also needs to get to bed early the previous night.

We need to take a hard look and decide if watching TV or being hooked on to the mobile late at nights is really required. One needs to decide on a time and consistently follow a routine every day.

I compulsarily drop my mobile in a tray in one corner of the room and then go to bed. Over the last 2 years, this has helped me sleep much better.

And when I saw that I was wasting too much time on Facebook, Instagram I decided to set a 5 minute App Timer for both these apps. This is designed in Android phones in such a way that one can still squeeze out 15 minutes each on a daily basis. This is still much better than 1+ hour that I was wasting earlier. 

We need to be conscious about where we employ our time. Everybody has the same 24 hours everyday. Believe me, 24 hours is a lot of time.

My father always used to say, "You can earn back lost money, but not lost time"

One needs to list out the things that one needs to accomplish on a particular day, prioritize them and plan a time - try as hard as possible to stick to this list of priorities for that day. 

At the end of the day, take 15 minutes to check on what was done well, and what was not. More importantly, what needs to be done better or differently the following day - and adapt quickly.

Long back I wrote this Post on Time.

The Feedback Loop

We may be participating in the retrospective meetings in our "Agile" projects. On similar lines, we should consider having a personal retrospective on a fairly regular basis. A high level of personal awareness, and an ability to be self-critical is essential for this to be effective. 

We get a lot of feedback, both implicitly and explicitly from the world around us. We need to filter out the noise, take what is important, and make those necessary changes in order to get better every day.

A Positive Mindset!

Much of this has to do with our personal upbringing, which hardwires our thoughts and beliefs right from our childhood days. In the past, I used to be a predominantly pessimistic person. With mental engineering, I have been able to have a more positive outlook, which has resulted in much positive outcomes overall, atleast in the last 10 years or so. On the topic of positive mindset, I wrote this Post some years back as well.

Consistency and Perseverence

The book "Good to Great" is about how good companies transform to become great. While much of the companies written about may not be relevant or even inexistent today, there are many things that one can pick up and incorporate into one's individual life as well.

One the of concepts that I really could relate to was "Crawl, Walk, Run!"

We need to be relentless in our pursuit of what we want to accomplish in our lives, which encompasses all aspects of our life - personal, professional and financial.

We can always start slow, become better at what we do and then eventually master it. At some point in time, there is enough momentum generated in the flywheel that helps in making extraordinary progress. This is only possible with unwavering focus, and a never give up attitude.

Personally, I have found good success with this approach in Cycling and Investing. Maybe a separate post on each of them if there is public demand.

Hopefully some day I can be really good at many other things too.

It's been a long post, I leave with a great dialogue from a movie that I saw not so recently.

The Second Wave!

 It's been a bit more than a year into the pandemic. World over, it has been tough times for everyone. 

There was so much happening, so much VUCA(typical management jargon: Volatility Uncertainty Complexity Ambiguity) that there was not enough clarity of thought to write something meaningful.

Personally and professionally, things were tough for most part of 2020. But thankfully, perseverence, tact and courage during these tough times meant that it concluded as THE best year for me in terms of outcomes at work.

All the 3 programs under my responsibility had desired success. This was largely possible due to the support of the teams working on it, who were relentless in their quest for success. This was also true for our entire department, where collectively we delivered crucial deliverables inspite of the pandemic.

This meant that the ones who worked really hard, were very well rewarded. 

Lesson learnt: During the toughest times, put in the best efforts. It pays bigtime!

The stock markets, which tanked initially recovered sharply. An election year in the US  meant easy access to funds which moved our markets irrationally. I must admit, I may have missed a major part of this rally. But more importantly, many new first time retail investors entered into this market. 

Whether or not they make money in the long term needs to be seen, but it certainly gave me a sustainable and viable path for an alternate career. Whether or not I shall really take it or not, only time will tell.

This meant that I spent a lot of time learning through material available on the internet, and also learning through books.

Lesson learnt:  Knowledge is Power!

I must admit, I may be following 10% or lesser from what I read from these books. 

But I'll get there!

From a fitness perspective, social distancing norms meant that I wasnt keen on continuing with badminton till I felt confident about the situation. I switched to cycling, mostly 20-30 kms rides on a mountain bike over the weekends on the slopy city roads.

This has helped my stamina, focus, and more importantly, will power. 

Next step is to graduate to longer rides on a road bike, but when that will happen only time will tell!

But there's a more important reason why I chose to write this post today. 

While the pandemic's supposed third wave is impacting most parts of the world, the second wave as they call it, has hit India really hard! 

This time the numbers have been much larger, and going up in an exponential manner. This has been compounded by reported 'double' or 'triple' mutations. This is leading to many false negatives in RT-PCR tests, and also casting a doubt on the efficiency of certain vaccines available today.

We could say increased economic activity, elections in 5 states, Kumbh Mela, IPL or whatever. But the root cause is us! We let our guard down, and it is having serious implications on everyone. This may have also many impacted people who did nothing much wrong, and simply stayed home.

And the government is only as good as the people who vote for it(or dont vote at all), similar to "Yatha Raja thatha Praja" in the olden times.

In the first and second waves, even the most developed and wealthiest nations had serious pressure on their well developed healthcare systems. As a developing nation, the pressure on our systems is going to be manifold. 

Despite all this, we still managed to help many countries, even developed nations in meeting their medical demands, even if its in a small way(HCQ tablets, vaccines, etc). Irrespective of which government is in power,  as Indians we would have anyway done it. 

But the same developed nations are now being "practical" in our times of need.

There has been a deliberate attempt to block access to raw materials which could scale up our vaccine manufacturing capacity. Being the pharma capital of the world, we have enough capacity to manufacture for our need, and for the everyone else's as well. The political rhetoric from even the European countries has been disconcerting.

Negative global press coverage apart, as a precaution many countries have stopped flights to India. As they tackle their own problems, should something go wrong to the Indians who have gone to these "developed countries" for education, in search of greener pastures, or for work, we need to be fully aware that they would only naturally give preference to their citizens.

The situation today is grim, it can only get worse before it can better. The next 2-3 months are going to be critical for that.

It will surely get better, and we need to do our bit for that.

Stay positive, but stay extremely cautious. Staying away from news channels is a good first step to stay clear of depressing thoughts.

Restrict social interactions, especially in groups to a minimum.

Everything else can wait. Be close to your near and dear ones. You never know who needs your help when, and vice versa.

Exercise restraint on social media, especially on posts related to political propaganda. They serve no good to anyone, but simply build acrimony amongst the people. We need to be standing united as a nation now. No time for politics!

Show compassion, help the needy wherever you can.

Most importantly, at the first given opportunity, get vaccinated. 

We have setup one of the largest vaccination programmes in the world. As on date we have been able to completely vaccinate only 1.5% of our population, despite giving close to average 25 lakh doses on a daily basis. 

The developed nations have hoarded a large chunk of the global vaccine supply, thanks to their superior buying power. Now that the government has opened vaccination for all above 18 years of age, please register and get vaccinated. We may need to match dollar for dollar to secure this supply for ourselves. Even after both doses, we need to be patient for a few weeks, if not months till the antibodies build up and immunity is achieved.

Dont relax yet!

Apparently herd immunity is achieved reliably when more than at least 60% of the population is vaccinated, or exposed to the virus. Remember, kids below 18 years of age are still not covered yet. 

To be safe, we need to ensure that the vaccination rate crosses a significant part of our population. Given our population, all this could take 3-6 months at a minimum. 

Patience. Jaan hain tho jahaan hain!

A new learning

Its been a while since my last post. Between then and now, a lot of things have happened. On the good part, I went to Europe in warm weather- though it was only Germany. All my previous trips till then were in gloomy winter.

And since I could spend a weekend, I got a chance to visit the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart - for which I got a free entrance, by virtue of my company ID card.
This was a chance to connect with history, to know about a passion for engineering excellence. This happens to be right across the Porsche Museum. Two of the many names that have brought immense fame to the city of Stuttgart.

This beauty was a restoration, once owned by the Maharaja of Kashmir

But all this was in the middle of really tough days in a particular project.
Most of this time was spent in having to prepare presentations on what went wrong, how to fix it and by when.
Just as I was about to post this, I read this tweet that someone shared.
"If its written in Python, then its probably machine learning. If it's written in Power Point, then its probably AI."

This, and the next part of the post were lessons in project management for me, and a brutal reality check.

Just as the project storm had weathered, our family took up a long pending project at home - Kitchen renovation. This was the second part of a longer program of home repairs - which started sometime in the beginning of the year.
And when I said kitchen renovation, everything up to the last tile in the 20 year old kitchen was ripped apart and replaced with something more contemporary. It was much similar to the project at work, where majority of the code was rewritten from scratch, rather than part by part refactoring.

During this period, I had to work with a lot of people - carpenters, masons, tiling specialist, painters, electrician, plumber, granite experts and so on. And this experience prompted me to write this post - the right people are essential for any project to succeed.

I was wary of the budget. But since I knew good material and good workmanship comes at a premium, I was prepared for any kind of budget over run.
But I was not prepared for the kind of schedule over run - what should have been 6 days of work, took 3 full weeks. And during this time, the family had to endure a lot of trouble without a functional kitchen at home.

The underlying problem was people, and my inability to deal with them.

Each of the people involved were good in their own area work. But the uncertainty associated with them was responsible for all the delays. So many days were lost when no work actually took place, where one person or group was waiting for the other to complete their bit.

For example, a good plumber whom I know just took off to his hometown whilst keeping his mobile phone back in the city. It was only after 4 days of waiting that I had to get a substitute fielder to do part of his job.
But then, the same good old plumber became available at the next time that I needed him - the threat of losing a bigger business did the trick.

The biggest challenge was dealing with the granite experts, who contributed to most of the delay. And since I had to pay a sizable money as advance, I could not have moved this work to someone else after that. Escalations to the owner of the company didn't help much - but threatening his 20 year reputation did.
On a positive note, I was really impressed by the quality of their work and the overall finish that their work brought to the kitchen.

An ever reliable electrician and painters did an awesome job, without having to look over their shoulder.
The tiling expert and mason also did a good job. But while one didn't know how to use the materials to the best effect, the other had to come back to fix some bugs that he had created.

But the best of the lot were the carpenters. A real professional unit, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. While the elder brother did all the marketing, design and managing finances. The younger ones did all the heavy work- creating the furniture, transportation and installation. While the quality of their work was really good, it was their cheerful outlook towards work that impressed me the most.

Their primary skill was carpentry, but when the situation demanded, they pitched in to do electrical work, tiling, masonry and everything else in order to get things done.

You may call it T-shaped skills in an agile team.

I could draw a lot of parallels with how things went on at the project at office. And in general what's common with the corporate India, and the unorganized sector is our lackadaisical Chalta Hai attitude towards work.
Between the carrot and the stick, its almost always that only the stick works.

Leadership

I've been contemplating to write on this topic for a while now.
While I was interviewing for my present job, one of the interviewers asked me, "What's leadership according to you?"
I had prepared quite well for the assessment, but somehow missed preparing for this question specifically.
Being an avid cricket follower, I replied that for me Clive Lloyd is a great example of Leadership for the way in which he turned around West Indian cricket.
In one of their tours to Australia, the West Indian lost badly, mostly due to the intimidating bowling of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson.
But by the next tour a few years later, he had created a formidable bowling attack, which decimated the Australian batting lineup with the same intimidating bowling, leaving a few batsmen maimed as well.

To follow it up, their batsmen played aggressively enough to reverse intimidate the Aussie fast bowlers.

When the then English captain Tony Greg made a careless and purportedly racist comment like, "I intend to make them grovel", Clive Lloyd made the entire English team suffer brutally, with the same hostile bowling. This series was so intriguing that a movie called "Fire in Babylon" was made around it.
This picture of Brian Close says it all.

What he did, changed West Indian cricket, which meant that they dominated the world cricket scene for the next 20 years or so. 

I'm sure there have been great captains after that - Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Steve Waugh, just to name a few.

But the one person that I wanted to talk about is Saurav Ganguly. Of course, he was "God of the Off Side". He transformed the Indian team in a way that no one else did. Undoubtedly, he had "The God of Cricket", "The Wall" and "Very Very Special" in his team, but they could not be great captains themselves.

He led them from the front and backed his team to the hilt. 

Introduced great talent like Yuvraj Singh, Mohammed Kaif, Zaheer Khan and so on.

When Harbhajan Singh was close to getting dropped, but Dada put his foot down and got the selection committee to have him in the team for the Australian "Final Frontier" tour to India. It was Harbhajan's 27 wickets in the 3 tests which was largely responsible to end the 16 test unbeaten run of the 'invincible' Aussie team.

I'm sure a lot of my batch mates will still remember risking their semester exams by watching VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid play the dream partnership at Eden Gardens, which change the whole complexion of the series.

Its legendary, the way in which Dada frustrated Steve Waugh by making him wait for the toss. 

Even more legendary is this picture from the Lord's balcony.

Back in our professional lives, everyone has some or other person they look up to as leaders. For me, a true leader is the one who backs the team, guides them when the challenges seem insurmountable. And eventually delivers in style. Yearning to be a leader is easy, but being one is not. Its easy to talk strategy from 60000 feet. But actually walking the talk, is not.

And remember, "Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm".

Why so Serious?

Recently I was scanning around my Alexa playlist for music by Ennio Morricone, the same person who created the music for "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly".  I chanced upon this magnificent track from an Italian movie "Malena", featuring an equally beautiful Monica Bellucci.

It's about the childhood crush of a young boy on a much older lady. And like most crushes, this one is about the kid's short term tribulations associated with it.

I''m sure every one of us had similar crushes in our school days, and maybe a bit later too. At that point in time, it would be the most serious thing that happened to us, but within days or weeks, all that is forgotten and life's back to normal. Much of what happened in those years was like that.

But is that the case when we grow up?

I was going back to my own posts from more than ten years back. Back then it used to be travelogues, movie reviews, photography, long drives and so on.
But my last few posts have been on not so fun topics, which makes me ask this question,
"Why so serious?"

I guess everyone goes through phases of life when different things take priority. I just wonder, how things will turn out ten years from here on.

To be honest, I didn't have anything of purpose to post lately. But then, I remembered a story that goes somewhat like this.

By Hindu mythology, it is believed that the rains are caused by Lord Shiva's beating of his special drums. And for some reason, He got angry with the people on the earth that He decided that there would be no rains for a long time.
The people, who came to know went to Goddess Parvati asking for help, who understood that something had to be done so that the people don't suffer. She told a nice story to convince the Lord that one needed to constantly practice what they do, in order that they don't forget doing it altogether.
And just to be in practice, the Lord plays his drums and in the process brings rains.

I didn't have anything much to write, which makes this a pointless post actually.
But did it just to keep in touch and not forget writing altogether. And now that you've reached this far, take some time away to "Return To Innocence"

Putting India First

I've been caught up with a lot of things lately, which didn't give me enough time post for a while now.
I was also on my annual pilgrimage vacation encompassing temple runs through coastal Karavali and Malnad regions. A 1000 kilometre drive is good for the car, and for me as well.

I must admit, the best time for photography at my grandma's house somewhere in the deep forests of  Chickmagalur district is either on a rainy day, or on a really foggy and cold winter morning.
Nevertheless, there were still enough flowers to get the photographer excited in me.

Around this time, I heard of the massacre of Indian soldiers in Kashmir. As I was contemplating what our response should be, two statements made by the same person came into my mind.
"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to defeat, for it is momentary".
"If there is violence in our hearts, then it's better to be violent, than to cover impotence in the cloak of non violence."

I could see a lot of Facebook posts, Whatsapp posts around this for the past week or so.
I am sure that the powers that may be are planning a befitting reply to all this.

I would certainly like to see an Operation Wrath of God kind of onslaught against the perpetrators of this attack. This was how the Israeli intelligence, under the leadership of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, responded to the 1972 killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
They did kill, but in ways which created an eternal fear in their enemy.

As a country, we are far more diverse than any other country in the world - language, food, ethnicity, religion, traditions and so on. The British used all this, and the caste system to further divide us. And they also ensured that regions friendly to them benefited at the cost of others around them.

And over the last 70 years or so, the politicians have also exploited this to suit their need, or greed.

From my childhood days, I can think of Cauvery water and Belgaum disputes as two strong examples of this in Karnataka itself. They were created by the British, and nurtured by our politicians - I feel that they have manipulated the emotions in such a way that we spew hatred and venom on our own countrymen, while a practical and amicable solution is always a possibility.

Its always easy to put the blame on our politicians, but is there something that we could do on a day to day basis, at work? 

I am talking primarily from an IT professional's perspective, but could be applicable for anyone else as well. Whenever we work with a new client, or new partner - there is immense amount of skepticism, pessimism on whether the teams from India can deliver. Right from day one, its a matter of playing catch up.

And when we investigate deeper, on why its like this, the answer is clear. Almost everyone who has worked in the past, has had a poor experience working with India. 

Poor quality, lack of skills, commitment, communication, etc could be root cause - at any level, from a developer to the CEO. In one of our team dinner discussions, we guesstimated that at most 40% of the projects we take up across Indian IT is actually successful - and we were being quite generous.

I can recollect being part of a test fest at Bled, Slovenia for one our products in the late part of 2007. Though we represented a highly respected multinational company, we were always identified as Indians, and never as professionals from our company, and almost always in a condescending manner.

Every time we do a bad job at our work, the damage caused is beyond the team, the unit, the department or the company. Knowingly or unknowingly we sully our own country's name.

The real soldiers may be securing our borders, but we have to do our bit as well.

Time!

I'd like to wish readers of my blog posts a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2019. Maybe a lot of you have made a lot of new year's resolutions, good luck with that.
I'm not much of a fan of new year resolutions. I try to bring in new changes on a weekly basis.
Agile vs waterfall if you may call it.

There's one thing I've been trying to change almost every Monday now, but struggling with it. I want to stop making the three hundred metre dash from home to the stop where my office cab picks me up. I somehow end up being late, by a minute or two - forcing me to run, thrice a week almost regularly.
There have been times when my colleague in the cab has made it amply clear that I need to be more on time. Though not the best way to start the day, I'm still OK with it.

One, I need to respect her punctuality - 6:11 AM, nine days out of ten.

And two, these two minutes help me earn close to two hours of more productive time at work.
Baffled? Let me explain.
If I reach by office cab, I am at my desk 7:20 in worst case. A quick email check, equally quick breakfast and I'm good to start my day's work by 8:00. And since my first planned meeting is not before 9:30, I get uninterrupted time alone to accomplish a lot that I've planned for the day.

On the other hand, the two days a week that I take my car, I tend to be a bit slower off the blocks. Which means that I reach office by only around 8:00 and then rush off for breakfast immediately. Which means that I can start work by 8:45 at the earliest.

Since time is the most important non renewable resource we have, I thought why not spend some time writing about it.
Maybe share some tips that I picked up over the years.

One needs to be very efficient with time, be it at work or elsewhere. Planning, discipline and prioritization are really important for this.

A known technique for better time management is the Pomodoro technique - I've personally used my adaption of this for the best part of fifteen years now.
First up in the morning, create a to-do list for the day. Keep a target end time at which you plan to end your work. Remove the non productive time - meetings, org activities, lunch, breaks, etc.
Now, breakup the total available time into equal parts, called as a Pomodoro. You may start with 25 minutes each, while I prefer 40 minutes for myself.
During this time pickup one item after the other from your to-do list, focus on it completely - no mails, no mobile phones, no self initiated talks with colleagues and so on. Working in silence, be it at office, or in the kitchen is a sign of control.
If you need to let your colleagues know that you shouldn't be disturbed during this time, you may even consider getting flags from Barbecue Nation.
If your work involves sending a lot of emails, then you may consider having a dedicated Pomodoro for that as well.
After each Pomodoro keep a 5 minutes break - where you may respond quickly to emails. 

And after four successive Pomodoros, take a longer break, say 15 minutes. Likewise, plan for a longer 30-45 minute break coinciding with your lunch break.

Please note two things here.
One, Pomodoro translates to a Tomato, which means that you are bound to get a few rotten ones - unplanned meetings, short but needed discussions and so on. So don't plan for all of the available time in the day. After a few trial and errors, you'll be a better judge of how many good tomatoes you can do in a day.
Two, if you are a developer or into testing, you may say that planning may not be straightforward. You may not have a well defined to-do list, a lot of what you do may be R & D, you didn't get the build in time and so on. Nevertheless, it's still important that you plan your work adequately well and in a very structured manner. You'll get it right with experience, and it's important that you get the first button on the shirt right.
Try practicing a similar technique for a month or two, and check if you are able to manage time better and if your overall productivity is higher.

While this was about how to manage time better, the next part is about how to avoid time killers.

A few weeks back when I was reviewing the sprint outcome of one of my teams, I found that the team had spent a whopping 25% of the total available time(at 8 hours a day) on meetings. What was even more disturbing was that most of these meetings were unstructured(without an agenda) or without preparation, or both. 

When you initiate a meeting, its good to have an agenda, and then discuss only those points which are there on the agenda. When invited for one, please request the organizer for an agenda.

A word of caution here, since most of us are operating in a hierarchical Indian environment, use some discretion with this. 

I can recollect an instance a few months back with a senior manager in our department, where I sent out the meeting invitation with an agenda. The response was "Oh, you are very being professional, meetings with an agenda!". Nevertheless, since we stuck to the agenda, the meeting that was planned for 30 minutes, got over in 9 minutes flat!

Two days back, one of the leads in our team said that people take tea breaks of the duration of a lunch break. This is a particularly irritating habit, I'm sure across all teams, in almost all companies across India. While breaks may be necessary, the duration and frequency is what needs to be in control. Self restraint, discipline and knowing one's priorities is very important here. 

And since we are talking about time here, a lot of it is applicable to our daily lives outside of work as well. In our school days, I'm sure we were taught that recreation is necessary.

In today's day and age, if one is spending more than 45 minutes a day on recreation of whatever kind - TV, internet, social media, reading novels, playing games on the mobile - they are doing a big disservice to themselves and just wasting time.

I remember that my father was very strict with time. In the summer vacations he was OK with me playing cricket in the hot sun, but never approved of me reading Hardy Boys at home. I didn't understand why when I was a kid, but now I do.

The body also needs adequate rest in the form of sleep, but we need to know to draw the line between taking rest and being lazy. 

Hours of wasted time add up to days in a few months, days to months and months to years. One can earn lost money, but never lost time.

On a more philosophical note, one needs to challenge time all the time. No matter how hard we try, Time always Wins!

Just wanted to end this post with a very profound song on Time by Pink Floyd. Its so good that I was compelled to copy paste the lyrics. If you understand this, you know what time is all about.

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again.

The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

The time is gone, the song is over,

Thought I'd something more to say.

Home

Home again

I like to be here

When I can

When I come home

Cold and tired

It's good to warm my bones

Beside the fire

Far away

Across the field

Tolling on the iron bell

Calls the faithful to their knees

To hear the softly spoken magic spell"

Don't think about the Pink Elephant

When you read the heading of this post, what was the first thing that came to your mind? A Pink Elephant?

Off late, this has been the question that I ask many of my teammates. And I ask this everytime someone comes up to me and says,
"I don't think we are in a bad position for this sprint."
"I don't think I have a problem with my manager." 
"I don't think we'll be able to complete this task within this time, given the experience we had last week."

Research has proven that the human brain has a big issue dealing with negatives.
In my experience it's more so when the sentence itself begins with negatives.

Someone came to me to get an email reviewed, which read like this, "We cannot support this feature by date X as the UI concept is not available."
I got it rephrased to, "We shall be able to support this feature by date X if we get the UI concept by date Y." 
This way we communicated a positive intent to support, and subtly put the onus on resolving dependencies to the other side as well.

There are a handful of people who are eternally optimistic. When one interacts with them, one feels everything looks so "Bade araam se". I'm lucky to have a few of them in my team as well.
Being like that comes naturally to them. 
But for normal people like me, it needs constant conditioning of the mind. 
A lot of our attitude shows up in the way we talk, our day to day outlook and the overall body language, without our knowledge. 
Almost every time that I have started something on a pessimistic note, I have failed. 
Almost every interview that I have attended in the past in which I have uttered the words, "I don't know" (or similar) when faced with a difficult question, the interview has ended shortly after that.

Many years back, a manager of mine wrote these exact words in his annual appraisal comments about me, "Santosh needs to work with a more Can Do Attitude".
Given that we didn't exactly share the best of professional relationships, I could have easily ticked it off as an attempt to vilify me, since it was documented and could be used against me in the appraisal discussion. 
Nevertheless, I sat down to understand if this was true and how to address it. And it turned out that I had a fair deal of change to be done in my attitude and communication. More on what I did, in some other post perhaps.
To keep it short, everyone likes people who believe "The Word is my World" rather than "The World is my Word".

Around this time, I also attended a training program where the trainer told us this story about a seasoned mountaineer who had climbed all the major peaks in the Himalayas. He spoke about the difference between the amateurs and the seasoned ones when they have to tackle a tough section of the mountain in front of them.
While the amateurs try to find all ways around it or maybe even bypass it, the veterans always find a way through it. 
His point was, "If I am here to conquer a mountain 6000 or more metres high, then I must not be deterred by this small section of mountain in front of me".
This was the most important learning point for me from that training program.

We must be like the seasoned professional in our outlook towards everything.
At work, everyday we are faced with all kinds of challenges and obstacles. Its up to us to decide if we want to procrastinate, circumvent, find an excuse or take these challenges head on. When I mean head on, I don't necessarily mean to be fast and furious in action.
Of course, doubts, apprehensions, will always be there.
Its important to take note of them and find ways to solve them, rather than not taking up the challenge itself. We also need to reassure ourselves that "Aal iz well".

While we may not be successful at all times, it will help us grow stronger and be better prepared the next time around.

A very profound quote from Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

Enchanting Europe

There were a few other topics that I wanted to write about, but since I returned from a short business trip, I thought I'll write about it first while its still fresh in memory.

I got an opportunity to travel to Germany for the workshop of a new project, and I had quite a few of my colleagues with me. Most of them stayed in the same hotel as mine, in a quiet countryside hotel in a place just outside of Stuttgart.

The view from my room was something like this.

We went to Stuttgart city twice during my stay. It vividly reminded me of the Need For Speed Porsche Unlimited game that I was addicted to during my engineering days. Many of the places, the U-Bahn lines in the middle of the roads, the old style Hauptbahnhof looked all so familiar from that game.

Over the weekend, we got a chance for two short day trips. One to Schwarzwald(Black Forest) and the other to Interlaken in Switzerland. 

Here's Triberg waterfalls in Schwarzwald, home to one of the oldest hydroelectric projects in the world.

Interlaken was just around three and a half hours' drive from the place where we stayed. It was a place full of vast lakes, giving a picturesque view of the Alps behind them.

 

This was also the place where Yash Chopra shot a lot of the scenes in DDLJ. In honour of that, the local authorities put up a statue of him, calling him the Ambassador of Interlaken.

This was my fourth trip outside of India in the one year after joining Mercedes Benz, two of them being to the US and two to Germany.

Somehow I liked Germany, and Europe a lot more than even the sunshine state of California, despite the weather. This is my kind of place, in a quaint setting with an old world charm about it.
This explains why I have a second post on Europe, the first one being more than a decade back.

A family friend of ours, who's settled in the US and comes to India once a year always says, "America is man made, Europe is God made".

There were some things that I liked about Germany in particular.

Public transport system
You can buy one ticket and use them in any of the buses or train lines, as long as you know how far that ticket can take you. There are no turnstiles in train stations, nor conductors in buses. They believe in the honour system, based on trust.

It is efficient and dependable, and available at late in the night as well. A much better experience when compared to what I had in UK.

Autobahns and driving
Germany is one of the few countries in the world with no speed limits on sections of the Autobahn. This is to show off what German automobiles are capable of.

There were stretches where Shyam was driving at 180 kmph, only to be overtaken by someone driving at upwards of 200kmph.

But there is not at all Fast and Furious. It's disciplined, patient and meticulous- something that I didn't notice much even in the US.

Even taxi drivers used to observe the speed limits, even in residential and village areas.

Generally safe

I generally felt secure, even in the most desolate stretches even late at night. Happened to see German police swinging into action within minutes of an altercation at a local restaurant.

There were somethings that I didn't like as well.

Expensive

In general, cost of living is pretty high owing to high per capita income. 

More than that many basic things for which you need to pay.

For instance, extra plates at a restaurant, or say, using the restroom in a public place.

Even in the smallest village, we had to pay for parking - can't imagine something like this in the near future anywhere in India.

If Germany is expensive, Switzerland is doubly so - ranks highest on the Big Mac Index.

No country for old men(and women)

I wouldn't want to delve more into it. But this is the price one pays for an independent way of living.

But the best part of the trip was the great company I had with me.

I don't know about them, atleast I had a great time in their company. Be it the joint breakfast, be it the dinner and after dinner talk, or be it the hot coffee after a long day at work ,or be it the short walk in the cold winter to the bus stop - I loved every moment of it.

After coming back, we had a team dinner in Bangalore city (and not Whitefield). After this, I made my team an offer they could not refuse - Ice creams at Lakeview on MG Road.

"If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, take people along!" 

Generation of Degeneration

My last post was after a long time. I'm glad that a lot of people liked it, which gave me that much more incentive to write again on a more regular basis. Thanks to all for that.

Time was always a constraint, but more than that being able to sit in a quiet calm place and gather my thoughts into a meaningful post was not happening.

Most of my previous drafts ended up as '..half a page of scribbled lines'.

Anyway, coming to this post.

A few months back I was riding my two wheeler to make an appointment in Sadashivnagar. Just as I entered the by lane, I got flagged down by a traffic cop.
I had turned left on a green signal, had worn a helmet, and to my knowledge had broken no traffic rule.
I still got fined for a faulty registration plate. And mine was a new Vespa, which had not completed even a year. I was flummoxed.

The cop tried to fleece me by saying that the fine would run up to 400 rupees. When I insisted, he agreed to let me pay a fine of 100.

On my way back home, I had a lot running on in my mind on what had just happened. 

Just at that moment, a bunch of youngsters broke the traffic signal, vehemently even went on the wrong side of the road and just disappeared.
And all this, within a hundred metres of where I got fined. I was pretty pissed at the situation. 

Why can't the traffic policy focus on catching these kind of offenders, instead of enforcing some absurd rule, which no one would ever know of.

Having grown up all my life in Bangalore, I am beginning to hate the way things are turning out. I'm sure things are just as bad any place else in India, if not worse.

Traffic has always been bad for the past 10 years or so. But the brazen impunity with which people have started breaking the most basic traffic rules is what's irritating me.

Riding on the footpath, breaking the signals, driving on the wrong side of a wrong having medians are some of the things we see daily.

And its not just the seemingly uneducated auto-rickshaw or cab drivers who do this. Everyone else does it as well. And a good number of people are complicit, when we sit or sleep comfortably in our office cabs and let the driver flout the rules.

This brings me to a few questions.

 "What's the point of our education?" 

"What could be worse than this?"

"What example do we set for our future generations?"

"Do we want to get things done at cost, even it's not right?"

Surely this is not my idea of Acche Din.

We could extend this to almost every aspect of our daily lives.  

I was talking to my colleague Ajay on a related topic a few weeks back. We discussed on the possibilities - stricter enforcement of the law to create a strong deterrence, mandatory training. But most important of all we spoke about the need for a strong value system right from the young age, at the home and school level itself.

In my last trip to Germany, one of my German colleagues told that in school they are taught about Hitler and his regime. This is to remind them that such mistakes should never be repeated ever.

Ajay returned to India after living more than ten years in Germany, where he had done his higher education and had worked for a long time as well. He then went on to make a statement, for which I was taken aback. 

"Santosh, I think there should be a big war sometime soon and the whole country gets destroyed. Then we should rebuild it all over again."

At first, it sounded a good option to me. My team mates also seemed to concur, while we were discussing this amongst a few other random things during our road trip to Interlaken.

But in reality,

"Are we ready to pay the price? 

Can we afford it?

Do we really something like this to set us right?
Is there a better way to deal with it?"

Stand up and Take charge

Last evening, while at the badminton club I had this discussion with a close friend of mine. He was my colleague at my second job. He had joined as a fresher some 11 years ago, and still continues to work there.
The statement that I made to him was, "People working there have a good job with great pay packages, but rarely anyone made a good career."
What he is doing now, is more or less the same as what he was doing when he was having 2 years of experience. And this made him feel less confident about himself. 

I must admit that I learnt almost all my technical skills, confidence about coding and perseverance while working here. This was largely due to the tough working conditions and the highly competitive nature of people working around me.

But how to build one's career, and how to grow, these I learnt in my brief stint at IBM. 

Right on the first day of my joining, at the pre-induction speech, an industry leader made this statement to all of us, 

"You are responsible for your career. You have to stand up and take charge"

This was something that I had never thought of, in the 11 years before that.
Reminded me of these lines from Pink Floyd's song Time, 

"... and then one day you find that ten years have got behind you,
No one told you when to run,
You missed the starting gun..." 

Based on my experience there, I could find at least three ways to help build a good career.

Career conversation with your manager.
As a professional it's my responsibility to setup a regular meeting with my manager and find out how I am doing and also let know of my needs and aspirations.
I'm lucky that some of my managers have been really good at this, even in my present organization.

Find a mentor.
It's extremely important that you find someone who's been there, done that. Someone whom you would look up to.

Approach someone you can trust and confide in. He/she may even say no, but may help you in finding a mentor. The mentoring may not be even a formal one. 

Find something that suits both, and works for you.

At best, someone with slightly higher experience than you can be a good buddy - a best friend at work, but never a mentor.

My own manager told me that one should avoid having their own manager as mentor. That's a potential conflict of priorities.

Learn from people around you.
As a budding architect, I was really lucky to work with some of the best architects across 2 business groups. I could gain a lot from their experience. Driving meetings, conference calls and negotiating with tough clients being the most notable of them.
I still get to learn a lot from my peer managers, and my immediate next level managers every day, in every way possible. 

At IBM, I was also training batches of graduate hires and inducting the good ones into projects in my group. But after a year into the projects, only a small handful of these actually did well. The rest simply fell into a bottomless well called mediocrity. They simply found their way into the crowd.

And this is true in many organizations and at all levels today, more so in the Indian context.

Insufficient technical competence may be a reason in some cases, but skills can always be learnt. Attitude, is not so easy.

To be honest, many don't know what their priorities at work should be. 

Some spend way too much time chilling out, just because the system allows them to do so.
In all the foreign cultures that I've worked in, be it east or west, people who spend a lot of time on personal calls at work are generally looked down upon. 

In the Indian context, we may not look down upon our colleagues, but certainly wont miss opportunities in making snide and loose comments on their backs.

Some people take their jobs as a mundane 9 to 6 job. By that, I don't necessarily mean that one must stay late in office, to give that visibility to their bosses.

What I meant to says is, if at any time, work is becoming routine and predictable, one must take it as an early warning and start to look for new challenges at work. 

A famous man once said, "We Indians get easily discouraged by setbacks." And he is absolutely right.

When faced with setbacks, some people tend to lose their enthusiasm, energy and passion.  Then it becomes a mundane 9 to 6 job, and people tend to go through the motions, meekly accepting what's thrown at them. 

It's important to get back up and take charge again.

For one to build a good career, undoubtedly the foundation also needs to be strong. 

Reasonably good technical skills, consistency, sincerity, hard work and unwavering focus are utmost essential. Of course, you need to be prepared to put in whatever effort it takes to be at the place where you want to go.

There are some who take the option of bullshitting their way up. Just remember, "you only know who's swimming naked when the tide goes out". Sooner or later, their luck will run out.

Whichever approach you choose, you must always keep checking if you are headed in the right direction.

Ultimately its your career. You must stand up and take charge of it.

Invest, as you can't depend on a single source of income

I had a long chat with a relative a few months back at a wedding function, while waiting for the bride and groom to tie the knot. Apparently, he was keen on dabbling into stocks. With the intention of having another source of income. So that he could say 'goodbye' to the IT lifestyle eventually.
Here are some interesting parts of the discussion, and some suggestions in general to some of my old friends, teammates who wanted me to dish out some gyaan on the topic of stock markets.
His idea was clear, but the execution wasn't going to be easy in the timeframe that he had outlined. But possible, if one gets into short term trading. The time frame for each trade could be 2 days to a week. But in order to succeed in this, one must be extremely choosy in picking the right trade, and super disciplined. The golden rules here are, "Cut your losses, but let the winners run" and "If you can't take a small loss, then prepare to take the mother of all losses".
Anyway, this was something that I tried for over a year, succeeded somewhat. But when in a bad trade it kept me stressed out for days together, lack of sleep, fidgety, nervous. Moreover, this is not something that a software engineer should be doing while at work.

But with a longer view i.e. as a long term investor in the market one can achieve the financial goals as well.
A personal disclosure here. Till date, I have not sold a profit making stock, and I have not held onto a stock which has gone past my maximum loss point..

All it needs is 15 minutes of quick reading time everyday and about 30 minutes to an hour of research over the weekends.
For newcomers, I'd suggest what my cousin taught me and which worked very well for me. Apply in new upcoming IPOs. Just check for the various analysts' ratings before investing. If you are lucky and have some shares allotted to you, then consider partial listing gains and keep rest for long term. If not allotted, then move onto the next IPO.

One may want to invest upto 25% of monthly income into the stock market regularly. My only suggestion is not to expect magical returns overnight. It's not betting in a horse race. It's investing in a business, and good returns take good time. Fixed return instruments provide around 7-9%. If you get 15% from the stock market,  you've really done well. Keep investing in small quantities, and let the power of compounding do it's magic.

Once you are done with  a few IPOs, move onto putting your money in good quality large cap stocks. Large cap means large companies with established businesses. They are the most heavily traded stocks in the markets. The returns are average, but they are safe investments.
Once you start seeing good returns in these, move towards mid caps and small caps. This is where the real money is. But mind you, these are equally risky. You must both be patient and sensible at the same time. If some stock you've invested in, goes below your predefined price, take a loss and exit. You can always enter back in.

When to invest is an interesting question. From my experience I can say that the best time to invest in small quantities when the markets are going down. Be greedy when everyone is fearful, and be fearful when everyone is greedy. Think away from the crowd.
This is what large financial institutions and stock markets 'Mavericks'  do on a large scale.
Having said that I'd want to research the company that I want to put my money in. Management quality, and the nature of business are 2 most important things to focus on. Most successful investor billionaires like to invest in businesses which have a strong moat around them. They are both unique, and have have very few competitors.
And just to mitigate the risks, at any point of time, I invest only upto 20% of my total money on high risk investments.

Where to invest is another question that many people ask. We are in the middle of Acche din (read multi year bull run), the markets have run up considerably in the past 18 months or so. So very little money is left to be made in established large caps. Still, the good safe investments are in large private banks, infrastructure companies, capital goods and construction. Basically, the companies which are helping build India. Generally known as high beta, they move very fast in both directions.
IT, pharma are the defensives. They move slowly in either direction.
Every portfolio must be a good mix of large, mid and small caps. High beta and defensives. Suggest not to be heavy on any sector or theme.
There's one more group of stocks which provide good dividends. You may want to keep a couple of them in your portfolio.

Periodically track your investment in each stock, look for buying opportunities. And be prepared to take losses and exit. Taking a loss is like performing surgery on one hand with the other.

That's it for now. Happy investing.

Method in the madness

Twice previously I have posted about how things work in the software industry. One was about planning, and the other on how appraisals are done.

Those were written at a time when I was an individual contributor, and the helpless frustration was evident in the sardonic tone of the posts. Then, I was forced to do what I was told, and in a way in which I was told to do.

Times changed, and so did my role. Slowly I got to lead a small team which slowly scaled up to be a fairly large large team of 8 - 9 members. Which meant, I got to be on the other side, where I was expected to do the planning for the project assigned to me, and take care of the appraisals part.
Planning and execution were something that I was always good at, even from my school days.

But appraisals are something that I absolutely loathed. Anyway, more about force fitment in some other post perhaps.

When I joined this industry, a lot of organizations followed the waterfall model. But as times progressed, companies with a strong engineering background figured out that it was not the best way for product development and moved to various forms of agile software development. It works or not, is entirely another topic.

I got introduced to agile development by my previous manager, but was able to learn the proper methods and techniques through a certification course.

What's it that you are reminded of when you read "Agile"? Cheetah ? Or an elephant?

Cheetah is undoubtedly the fastest animal on the ground, but what makes it agile is not just its speed, but its ability to quickly change directions even at that speed.

As with most other posts of mine, to connect to various different people with diverse backgrounds, I have taken general examples with intentional oversimplification.
Let me try to explain "Agile" for you. Mind you, this approach is applicable to people in many fields, even day to day life and not just software development. Whether it works for you or not, you need to try out and decide for yourself. But since this is a continuous evolving and self organizing process, which needs time and patience to perfect.

Let's say, you to go to a restaurant and order a thali. Most of the items are laid out on the plate at the beginning. Even though the variety and the quantity of food dished out overwhelms you, would you still gulp down all of it down your throat at once?
You slow start with the starters, proceed to the main course and then cap it all off with the dessert. The end result is that you have a nearly empty plate, assuming of course that the food is great.
This is really oversimplified version of agile for you.

Now, lets get back to the school/college/engineering days.
Most of the time we used to enjoy doing a lot of things which were not related to studies, sports, games, movies, mindless chatter, philately, ornithology and what not.
Come test/internals/exams time, then we would slog it away, burn the midnight oil, spend sleepless nights to cram in all the information at the nth moment. Finally, transfer all of this information into the answer booklet.
And this, is waterfall model oversimplified for you.

Well, in software development things get a lot more complex and the primary reason why the pundits junked waterfall model was that it didn't address change very well. And in the software industry, change is inevitable.

OK, now let's assume that you are a very diligent student, who also enjoys life to the fullest. There's always so much to do, and so little time. Say you adopt the simple "Plan the work, and work the plan" strategy well. Everyday you allocate some time for play, some for studies and some for everything else.
On a weekly basis you finish learning everything that was taught in college in that week. Without breaking a sweat. Say now something unexpected comes up, the plan needs to be flexible enough to accommodate this.
Come exam/internals time, you only need to revise everything once. And you are good to go.
No night out, no slogging, no last minute hustle. Plainly unemotional, isn't it?

So now let's extend this thinking to software development on a slightly larger scale with many team members. The complexity is much higher, but the idea is the same.
Break down the overall product development into smaller releases.
Have smaller more focused teams.
Make frequent and periodic releases to the stakeholders, with new features in every release. Make sure that each release is properly tested.
The final product release is just another day. No scene, no emotion, no scampering around, no night outs.


For all this to work in real projects, you need some help though. Support from managers, customer to try out, allow for failure. But most importantly, the unwavering support and faith of the team.
I was lucky to have them all.

I end this post with what a lecturer once told in class, "If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail"

Never Say Die!

A few days back, I read the book "Its Not About The Bike", the autobiography of Lance Armstrong.



















For the uninitiated, Lance Armstrong is an American cyclist who won the Tour De France record 7 times in a row. When you consider that the race spans over the length and breadth of France, spanning more than 3000 grueling kilometers, in all kinds of weather and across all kinds of terrain, you'd feel that it's a great achievement indeed.
Now, just consider this.
Lance Armstrong achieved this feat after he had recovered a from a rare form of testicular cancer, where the doctors had given him just a 40% chance of survival(realistically speaking it was lesser than 2%).

The question that I had in my mind was, "What makes some people tick?"

It was the endless support given to him by his friends, coaches, agents, doctors and his sponsors during the times of his illness and recovery, that probably helped him rebuild his career.
Post tumor recovery, it was the much needed perspective about life that his wife gave him, otherwise he was well on course to a life of decadence to be just another person; forgotten forever.
His self belief was reinforced by his mother and nurse, who were always with him to give him confidence that he was capable of recovering from his illness.
I guess without them, he wouldn't have achieve all the glory that he did.

And since Tour De France is a team event, no victory would be possible without a great team effort. One interesting fact that I learnt from the book was about a typical team composition.
At the beginning of the race, one or two riders in a team would be designated as the lead riders, the ones who were most likely to win. And the rest, are chosen as workers around them. Together they form a peloton, shielding the lead riders from the wind and also from riders of the other teams.
So many riders perform a selfless job for the team, knowing fully well that they are not here for individual glory, but to win as a team.

In my opinion the biggest factor that made him tick was his Determination.
A lot of it came from his mother, who used to tell him, "You never ever Quit. You just go through it." even in the most adverse of situations.

I guess this was the biggest learning for me from the book.

In life, how many times do we give up on our dreams and our aspirations even before we have made an honest attempt?
How many times we choose to settle for something that we don't deserve just because we are not determined enough to get what we want?
How many times we run away from taking up a challenge, just because we fear the ghosts that haunt us if we fail?
How many times do we take a safer option, just because we are not prepared to endure the pain and difficulties that might arise in overcoming our challenges?

Once I read this, "If you think you can, then you can. If you think you can't,then you probably are right."

Most of the time, its the boundary that we set in our minds that makes us think we are not capable of doing something that we consider difficult.
There's no better satisfaction that proving everyone wrong about one's own capabilities. Somewhere in some corner of our mind, there's that cynic who creates that doubt about our own self belief. Why not start off with proving him wrong?
And once we've done that, the naysayers around us are automatically taken care of.

In essence, we should never forget that old proverb that we learnt in school, "Where there is a will, there is a way."

This was the first book that I have read in the last 10 years or so. There was this compelling urge to buy this book when I saw it on the shelf of a book store. A totally unintended buy, but it was more than worth it.
And if you wanted to know if I liked the book, and if it made a difference, I'd say that I am planning to buy the book, "Every Second Counts", an extension to this autobiography.