My few 'Indian paise' on ways to improve work culture!

Good to see you all back! Today, we'd an interesting assignment from our VP in the organization I work for, who challenged all managers to come up with ways and means to shoot down the 'what-is-my-motivation-to-do-this-work syndrome that haunts some parts of our organization. Thought and thought on the subject, and here are my few Indian paise!

- Celebrate employees' day and Managers' day in the company. This idea can also be extended to an HR day, an engineering day, a finance day etc! On this day, highlight all good stuff that the respective team did during the whole year (or since the last time, the day was celebrated); publish it. call for a dedicated meeting held in the company premises for all employees, honour the achievers.

- Encourage celebrating employee birthdays at team level; this is normally done in all teams, but the difference is in the innovative way employed in collecting money into the b'day kitty - Penalize the last guy (or who doesn't attend at all) that comes into the regular team meetings. If there are people that missed attending, money can be levied from those guys too. Given that a team typically has 4 team meeings in a week, we can collect Rs.100/- in a month, if we collect Rs.25/- per guy! ON the specific day, team makes a dramatic presentation a of small momemto to the birthday guy. What a fun!

- Must celebrate all the various days - Mother's day, Father's day, Valentines day etc. Identify the event co-ordinator (only employees) during such days, which could again be through some interesting system - who will plan out all activities for the day. Separate budget allocation needed. Hold games, competitions at a common location within the office campus, where people may come and join, whenever they wish. Restrict the people that may join the celebrations. For example, only mothers can attend Mother's day, Fathers can attend father's day. HR should actively participate in all these and should come up with some mechanism to decide on the genuinity of the respective class of attendees!

- Make it a practice at the HR team, at least to send personalized greetings to all the people on their birth/marriage anniversaries etc.

- Encourage people to celebrate the little things that they achieve. This gives them a sense of accomplishment.

- Rotate lead/management responsibilities - not all, but certain, like conducting meetings that normally leads/managers conduct.

- Open house sessions with Sr.management, once a month; I don't think this needs any explanation.

- Prevention is definitely better than cure; start the people welfare activities early on, and don't give the impression that the management is trying to patch up something, when something irreristably appreciable is observed about the guy. Have team building exercises more often.

- Finally, involve HR/facilities team increasingly in deciding all people related stuff - Rewards/recognition, Work culture. I've heard certain wonderful ideas from these guys in the past - infact, anybody who works in a people supervisor role.

“Mr.Manager, but what do you actually do here?”

I work for a product company that works from multiple geographies, as a Software QA manager. When I joined this company 6 months ago, it was almost as if I was a new-born (Exactly, that's what it means, I'm a 6 months toddler now!), for lot of stuff were unclear to me on the processes and operations side of things, not to mention the numerous discussions that spring up almost daily on the product side, that made me feel in front of the rest, like a buffoon, to say the least! Although on the product side of things, I started to see rays of hope during my discussions - that turned into learning sessions, but unfortunately almost always gets unlearned after a couple of manager meetings - with the leads and other members in my teams, the processes part of it still was a big hollow for me. Though, my senior manager tried to explain a lot of stuff to me, there were many of those gaping holes in the system and most of those that I consulted with were unsure about the solutions, and sometimes even were unable to assess the size of those holes or their impact on the general working of the company. Initially, I was skeptical about my ability to understand and appreciate the system, but as time went by I realized that more or less everybody shared the same plight as I did, but only didn't speak out.

I tasked myself to work (and sometimes, re-work) on several areas that were left unattended/incomplete by my predecessors. It has been a bit (quite that!) extra work for me, but this helped me to learn - and continue to learn - a few things, develop ideas and play with them. More than anything, it helped me sharpen my thought processes. I'd always liked anything that stimulated the right part of my brain (which was rarely though - I've to admit!), hence slowly I started to like the whole thing. In the next few upcoming posts, I'll share with you some of those...No doubt, there is so much more to work on. I've just started to scratch the surface of it! This is really not an exaggeration at all, but most organizations that claim excellence in processes are still at this stage, and some even more pathetic.

If there is one thing that I learned from all of this, it is the futility involved in blaming the organization and/or the system for the way it is and instead, realizing that we're the ones who make it that way! Unless people do initiate it, things will not move even an inch from where it was an year ago, or even a decade could prove short in time. I think, it works phenomenally well, if everybody can tickle their brain cells, do some thinking. See for yourselves, how things will fall in place, only if we're determined to change it!

Within a few weeks of my joining the company, I was a bit embarrassed by a very innocent question from one of my team members that almost translates to "Agreed, you’re my manager, but what exactly do you do here, when I am the one who get all things done?"!. A very valid question, I started thinking about it. I didn't ask anybody for an answer, for it seemed to be a very trivial question and my ego didn't allow somebody else to define my role. I was afraid that somebody will ask me, 'Having worked for 12 years in the industry, don't you know even this?' I was terrified as the very prospect of somebody humiliating me like that!

I searched all over the internet, but I failed to come across any such article/white-paper/magazine columns that would even come close to defining the roles that I wanted to elaborate. So, I set out to define the roles and responsibilities for the various roles that are already present in the system, followed in our organization. I drafted one within an hour or so, but soon, I discovered that it wasn't as easy as that, since I had 2 more people in my team - a technical lead and a project lead - who were almost always barging into my territory of responsibilities. What am I doing here, if 2 others are constantly trying to repeat everything that I do? This particular aspect got me more interested on this exercise. So, I prepared a big list of responsibilities that possibly belonged to a similar system as ours, based on my prior experience. Now, the maximum confusion occurred while I tried to sieve out everything else from this list, except my own. I worked and re-worked for at least one full day. Here, I present the result of this almost fundamental, sometimes ridiculous, or even eccentric effort...

There could be a lot of responsibilities that, I realize, may need to be custom-created to the system itself, so these thoughts may not universally apply; but I feel that this could be a good starting point for somebody who is facing a similar situation (as I did before I set out on this task), to take these points and refine on them. Definitely, comments are welcome...


Technical lead

- Act as an interface between Developers in all geographies (represent the team during engineering discussions, QA-Dev meetings, and Mail/phone communications with developers)
- Technical mentoring of staff - including presentations, Q&A, knowledge base.
- Owns tracking of defect metrics (weighted defect count), help manager to assess on bug quality and follow-up activities including devising and implementing newer ways to better the team's performance on these aspects.
- Assist project lead in defining and own setting up of the test beds.
- Owns document reviews
- Leads the team over participation in exploratory testing, betas (beta forum), and code/bug bashes.
- Drive the innovation efforts from the team and encourage participation in internal programs like bug catch of the month/writing whitepapers/patent submissions.
- Owns Automation plans and frameworks

Project lead

- Daily task Management
- Planning
- Test Stripes & Prioritization
- Estimation & Scheduling
- Own test case/defect repositories and their maintenance.
- Owns test execution, regressions.
- Tracks and identifies any new requirements of hardware/software, help manager decide on whether to procure or swap with other teams in the same geo.
- Assist Manager with managing the expectations from remote teams.
- Status updates to manager
- Assist Manager with Risk Assessment/Management
- Assist Manager with MBO goal settings and reviews.

Manager

- Own team's productivity and follow-up activities.
- Own quantity/quality of the bugs reported.
- Own risk assessment/management.
- Own attrition.
- Status updates to higher management.
- Help teams mutually set clear and achievable expectations.
- Co-ordinate among various geographies and help define plans for efficient and effective product testing.
- Check on the team's confidence level on the product from time to time and keep rest of the team updated on each other's confidence levels.
- Owns long term planning on the team's structure to suite product/project requirements and individual aspirations.
- Update the team with visibility and road-map into generic/specific areas of product.
- Take stock of the team's performance periodically and work with technical lead to define ways for improvement.

CNR - try this on a software tester!

Long time! I know, but I'd been quite busy with loads of things.

This time, I don't have much to share, but a bit of insight into my own work area - software testing, that I thought I can share with my colleagues. One of the most serious problems in the software testing any day, has been about non-reproducible or un-repeatable bugs. I bet there has never ever walked/lived/slept (all the same!) a software tester in this world, who hasn't experienced it. It shows up its ugly face in all software shops and occasionally at customer places too. It has been a phenomenon that is nothing short of a night-mare for most test engineers out there. Its effect are so devastating that most people on the job gets perturbed when confronted with the situation (and a few of them, even upon hearing about such situation elsewhere in their vicinity!), and then triggers off a chain reaction of all 'dirtier' things - bad feelings, less morale being quite commonly observed among these. This issue almost always occurs at the most inappropriate situations, including the day before the grand release of your software, leaving you wondering whatever you could do to save your face (if you're a manager, your grief is doubled)! How much ever you talk about this darkest side in a software tester's life, it isn't more. Every piece of what I described about it has maintained status quo since I started working a software test engineer 11 years ago and the scenario hasn't changed a bit today, if not worse.

Today, I read an article about the precise problem we were talking about so far. The author tries to give a newer, fresh perspective into this. It's a ray of hope for all the unfortunate testers, who didn't have an idea where to start looking for a solution. I feel strongly for it, and think must be attempted by all to root out this problem. While reading it, two statements of caution however. Don't be under the impression that you can remove the problem for ever from the face of the earth. Let's accept the fact, it's going to remain a problem, till software exists. We can only reduce its impact, but that in itself is worth all the effort. Secondly, this exercise is definitely not for the weak-hearted. Without sweating it out, you aren't going to solve it; that's for sure.

With all this introduction in mind, go ahead & read the article. Following are some points I quickly extracted from the article, and that I felt were critical.

• 'Unrepeatable' bug is a myth!
• 'Can do' attitude is essential to crack those especially nasty ones.
• Collaboration is important, especially between testers and developers.
• Look at the big picture.
• Keep notes of all your work.
• Watch for patterns among the different sightings of the bug.
• Hunches are often right. Follow them.
• Develop a catalog of failures and their causes as you go.
• Be humble, courteous, and respectful of others’ decisions.
• Don't believe what you see always, for the GUI sometimes creates a wrong impression about how it actually works.
• GUI may not be the best place to repeat all bugs.
• Keep yourself updated on 'state of the art' in architecture, programming & testing techniques.
• Automation is the way to go! Repeat bugs with less pain.

PS: CNR means 'Cannot Reproduce'

Meeting time!

This article on meetings is from stickyminds, and is great...I always wanted to write a similar one, but didn't get the time and energy to think:-)

Just explore.

Here is the scenario. Recently, the lead in my team at the US came up with the idea of using exploratory testing as a means to unearth better defects in the product under test. Hence, my team at Bangalore were asked to do exploratory testing for half a day and report all defects they find in this process, expecting a significant turn-over than normal days. But, looking at the number of reported defects during the next day, she obviously got disappointed and immediately wrote up a mail to me expressing her concern (although, in gentle words!) and asking for my thoughts on whether to have such bug-hunts in the future. This was my reply to her.

NOTE: So, this is what. Sometimes, I get impressed by my own writing after I finish it up and want to show it up to the rest of the world. Part of the reason for this post to appear here is that, but partly I want to drive home the point that if you care about product quality and want to go bug-hunting, rely on exploratory testing. Everything else is of lesser priority.

"I am a great fan of exploratory testing.

This kind of testing allows to explore relatively 'unknown' areas using relatively 'un-tried' techniques and for this very reason, I strongly believe that this works best when we go on bug-hunting. Test cases are good, as far as they are looked upon as guidelines. However, what I've seen happening in the team during the past 3 months, is that repeated execution of them leads to boredom, errors and the result is missing defects and less productivity. More mechanical and less creative work will miss some great scenarios. Testers no more think like customers, and at this point the whole testing becomes another mundane, ineffective job.

Now, all this said, I think the team is receptive to this, but not set in the right mood for exploratory testing as yet. People are so used to the routine test case execution that their brain started rusting over the time. It will take some more (maybe, a lot more) time to exercise their minds before we can expect glorious achievements from our testing team. Nevertheless, I believe it is possible, with a lot more stress given to such exercises in the future. Encourage people to go all out to do exploratory testing as frequently as they can. While they engage in this sort of testing, let them take notes of what all they've done and discuss with the rest of the team at the end of the day. This will not only help individuals' defect counts, but also help team level communication that will ultimately end up in improving productivity. Just to clarify, I am by no means saying that test cases should be ignored. Test cases are the guidelines and should be seen as such. I am also not against test case execution since it rates the product's ability to work correctly using the 'knowns', but all I'm saying is that it is equally or even more important for us to know how the product performs using the 'unknowns'.

Now, to answer to your other question about the less number of defects filed yesterday, I didn't talk to the team in detail, but chatted with them for a few minutes. The feedback I got was that the product is in a much stable state now and hence the defects are less. It could be right (in which case, we all ought to be very happy), but I tend to think bugs are still hiding in the product very much, but just that people are not capable enough to exploit the 'power to explore' fully. So, I am afraid, if we stop encouraging people to do more of this now (because of whatever reasons), then people will go back to their old self and start rusting their brains again and, in this process, we had only wasted half a day yesterday!

After all these days, a long mail from me, for a change:-) Now, you may differ in your opinion and you've all rights to! I just described, what I think we must practice to see a change, especially if you want to see people enjoy the testing...it's all based on my own experience

Expecting a good debate on the subject and some important decisions that will help our team grow to the next level...

Regards, Anand Iyer"

Money matters...

It pains...a lot.

The pain is not physical and is beyond words to express, because it is my mind that aches. Nobody will see this or ever notice this, but I've been through this really badly during the past few days. On the contrary, I was on the other side until then, extremely happy and convinced to have done something neatly, up to my satisfaction for the good of my people.

It is about my own people. Of course, I consider all of them near and dear to me, although I've known them only for the past 3 months. So, what am I talking about? Go ask a manager, what is you worst nightmare? I bet a good 99% will say, appraisal time! Mine is no different, and I am awfully stuck this time.

During the past few days, people didn't even allow me to breathe! Discussions aplenty, everywhere you get to hear the same stuff; and your responses to all of them are pretty much monotonous. The only thing that was discussed was about that so called life's necessity, that thing which helps build/collapse one's life, one of many people's favorite metrics of their achievements - the 5 letter disaster called 'money'. I am starting to get tired of it.

Why do people break their heads so much, fighting for this 'differentiator' that creates such a gaping hole in the otherwise closely knit society, I wonder? The only other hole in the society is that created by our religions, but, the extent of divide created by money is shamelessly superior to anything else - not only within the society, but within ourselves. The minute you start thinking about money, even the most saintly mind will wander into the 'till now' unchartered territories; including mine, so I deliberately avoid any thoughts related to this thing! We all yearn for more and more and more of that.

Don't misunderstand, I agree that money is a necessity. But, first look around to see how much of that you already've, how much more you need, keep aside that selfishness and look outside of your own or your families' lives, into the rest of the society, and also ponder on this one question - what greatness can it bring me in life, than the life itself; don't you think that your life itself is your biggest gift, money is meant only to support it?

Ultimately, I am not worried for how much more of that I could've distributed amongst my people, but about how much their perspectives are different my own, how much importance our 'next' generation attaches to this tiny, innocent looking sheet of paper, how incapable I am to convince anybody on this...

Just would like to end the post with a note that even after all these, I consider it great privilege to take care of all my people and I still consider them my own!

My Management philosophy - IV

In the last post, I mentioned that there are certain situations (in fact, this constitutes 80% of what a manager will do!) in my job that I still wonder how to handle effectively. I fool around at times, but often my past experience comes in handy during all these situations. I will tell you how I deal with such situations. Mind you, this is just the way I do things, and perhaps not the best...

Diplomacy

I talk to people everyday. Believe me, it is not easy. At least, not for me. I remember the old saying here, "If you can't convince people, confuse them". This is what most of us, including me, practice daily. It is a 'trade secret' how I handle situations that demand diplomacy, but I don't mind divulging it here.

If you'd known me five years back and not since, you wouldn't recognize me now, because I've changed a lot. Lot of that were results of deliberate attempts from me. Not too long ago, I'd just risen upto a fact of life. I'd just moved in from a much smaller Indian city to Bangalore, the silicon valley of India in pursuit of a job. There were several issues with me during that time, but one of the major ones was that I was unable to communicate well with the team. I talked too less, and people used to read words of their choice from my silence. I used to depend on emails a lot during those times, and used it almost everytime that just a casual chat should've done it. It came down heavily on me, but I didn't realize it until some strong feedbacks came from my manager. It made me aware of how poor a speaker I am.

I attended a few sessions on business communication lectures and read a few books on the subject. I never bothered to practice really, but used to observe people when they talked, read a lot of articles and whitepapers. The next thing I know is I can talk endlessly on any subject related to technology, people or mostly anything at all - the last two, however, to a considerably less extent than the first one.

My observation of people, helped me tremendously with identifying various situations and acting on them, most times reactively and sometimes pro-actively (I admit this is one area, where I am still trying to improve). I can now visualize the priorities and alternatives of almost any situation that crops up at work on a daily basis. My reading habits helped me a lot in expanding my vocabulary that in turn improved my business communication many folds. Over the years, I knew what to talk, when and how? Everytime I'd to tactfully deal with some situations, I gracefully remember my previous bosses, about the words they uttered during similar situations, and just enacted them. It worked like a charm! Diplomatic talking is mostly to do with all this, and carefully convincing people. I do the first part well, but am not quite sure about the convincing part!

'Motivating' people

We already discussed about this in one of my previous posts. MOtiviating people is an impossible job, unless people themselves are willing TO BE motivated. HOwever, there is one thing that managers can do. Talk to people about the importance of the job, how costly it can be for the individual or the organization if the job is not done. While talking is important, listening too is. Listening will give a lot of insights about the strengths and weaknesses of people and even into the lives of individuals.

I think, although it's important for people to improve on the weaknesses, people must build on their strengths more. It is one of the most often ignored fact that our strengths cause us to excel, and being poor to mediocre in our weaknesses doesn't really count, unless when people are compared during which time the exclusion factor comes in the form of weaknesses(We will talk about comparisons soon). Strengths almost always contribute to a confident self, and causes whole environment also to have confidence in the individual. ALl of this results in improved productivity.

Conveying the bad news

One of the most needed traits of a manager, but extremely difficult to do a perfect job in. One thing that I've learnt here is never to start with the bad news first. Always start on a positive note, when you begin conversation, else peoples' minds start to wander and become too difficult to chase. Another thing that I learnt the hard way is not to attempt too much of intro. Don't attempt to patch up, believe me it's not going to help you or anybody, but will only do more harm. Come straight to the point. Once the news is out, never leave the team to ponder alone, instead join hands with the rest of the team to work out alternative plans. I'm far from
being perfect at it, but I can 100% appreciate the need for it.

Maintaining 'cool'

I think, this is the most difficult job of all. In reality it mayn't be that difficult and many of you may disagree, but I had very bad experiences with this one. I had literally shouted at people, in the past, for various reasons. When people started to shout back at me, only then did I realize that something is wrong! I did a self-appraisal and found that I'd set standards in my mind; if I don't find people living upto those, I concluded that they're not good enough. If you ask me, of all the so-called 'dirty work' a manager has to do, grading/comparing of people is one of the worst. Standards can be set to processes or work progress, but it is best not to set standards for people - fundamentally, because people behave in umpteen different modes all of which can't be defined or rated. If everybody behaved in strictly logical/rational ways, then we would be rather be working with robots than humans.

So, approaching people with no pre-set standards is absolutely criticial to maintaining the cool.

Again, I've to admit here that talking is much easier than done. Only time will tell, how well I'll do on all these...

My Management philosophy - III

We will talk about the typical challenges of a (people) manager in this and the next part of the series. There are several that I face on a daily basis, but many of those are probably specific to my case. So, as far as possible, I will talk only about issues that are common. I am no expert in any of these, in fact a beginner in most. I struggle almost daily on all these aspects. When I started off as manager, it was a painful life and I hated it.

This was when one of my previous managers came to my rescue with his most favorite quote, that he oft repeated in front of his entire team. I took refuge and used his quote as my defence to my poor performance as manager. He told me, "People management is one of the dirtiest jobs you could ever land up in", not once, but many times. He didn't tell me this during one of those pastime conversations, but during our 1-1's and I thought he was pretty serious about it. He knew that I aspired to be a manager some day, and was also aware of ambitions and my technical abilities. He probably wanted me to think it over, in the light of his own experiences with management. He perhaps had been the greatest influence in my professional life. I blindly followed his words and lived upto what he told me. I hated to manage people ever since. I invented stories to explain my failures as a manager. I used up all my energy to convince people that management IS indeed the dirtiest of all jobs and hence justified my failure.

All this, until a year ago when I started realizing the potential of great management. During the last year, I experienced many positive turns that great and responsible management can bring to the products and to the lives of many, including me. I started developing a new positive attitude towards management, slowly but steadily. I admit, I am still not a completely transformed guy. I still feel difficult when confronted with certain situtations. Even now, I am left confused at times about how best should I react to certain situations? But, no more does my blood turn cold and no more do I've sleepless nights, as it used to happen to me a few years before. Though I struggle at times, I'm more confident in facing them because of the following reasons.

1. Over the years, I discovered that all managers struggle more or less equally during such situations. Now I know that 'the perfect manager' is just a concept, not a reality! It's a myth. Nobody will treat you like a new kid in the block, unless you are (or rather just keep imagining you're) from another planet.

2. At one time in my career, I used to believe that if managers commit mistakes, they're unpardonable. Last few years in my career taught me, though it can prove extremely costly and should be avoided as far as possible, it is not an unthinkable offence for managers to tread the wrong path. It happens. After all, there is nothing 'God'ly about managers; they're humans too. In reality, I've seen many guys that blundered extremely badly, but ultimately got away with that. Not good, but it happens sometimes during situations when the system already has blunders worse than what you just experienced! Bigger blunders eclipse smaller ones, as long as severity is directly proportional to the organization hierarchy. Else, you're just unlucky.

3. All problems have solutions, although the solution could be a lot more easier, if none had blundered in the first place.

4. I'm no more a kid that can remain shut off from dealing with difficult situations, but face them. So, to remain fit is rather a necessity for me now, to survive in this world. I don't have a choice!

In my next post, we will discuss the key challenges and my own 'solutions' to them...Most of them, I learnt the hard way. I am not sure, if they are THE solutions, but at least those will not worsen the situations anymore!

My management philosophy - II

It's been a long time I wanted to write a sequel for 'My management philosophy'. But, guess what? With the 'manager-hood' comes certain necessary evil. One of the most significant among those is the meetings. During the past month, I would've spent a good 25-30% of my time on meetings that ate away my 'free time' almost entirely. With all my 'free time' gone, I couldn't find any for writing up my next set of thoughts for the blog. I, really am tempted to talk lots about this 'time-pass' of busy executives around the world, but I want to talk about something more close to my heart. Of course, we will come back to this subject, a very important aspect of 'manager-hood', in a few more posts.

In this post, I want to talk about how I think a team should be managed. Rather, I will talk about how (I think) a team shouldn't be managed. I've had many experiences in the past with my previous managers, all of which taught me, how not to manage a team (unfortunately, more than, how to manage!)

1. Manager's job is to manage the team, not the individuals.

In a perfect world, people would manage everything for themselves - whether he is a fresher at the job or 10 year experienced specialist. When we talk about people, we are talking about adults, more than 18 years of age. I think it is safe to assume so about all people working in an organization. 99% of the times, adults know what they're doing, can make choices for themselves, and are conscious about the time-lines (schedules and such). There may be exceptions, and again, the above rule can't be extended to all categories equally. So, what's the point? The point is, it's hence natural for people to resist the idea of the so called 'manager' to barge in their private world and 'manage' stuff for them. It's very important to understand that the line between managing and controlling is very thin. People perceive them differently. Management for me could be controlling for another. So, my learning is this. Don't ever try to 'manage' individuals. It's simply an unsafe practice to do so. It will do more harm than good - to you (and your family, in turn), to the individual, to the team and even to the whole organization.

Instead, manager should look at his job from a team perspective. Manager owns the end-result of the work done by the team, not the individuals. I believe, that individuals own their actions, being responsible adults. But, at the same time, manager is accountable (not exactly responsible) for all happenings - good and bad - that happen in the team, even if it is an individual that wronged. The line is thin between the two cases, but it's important to give the benefit of doubt to the individual.

Manager must oversee work at a team level on a regular basis (weekly, might be a good choice) with additional help, as needed. It helps to avoid surprises at the end (could, potentially be even the beginning!)

Manager must promote a culture within the team, so that it can perform well. One very good example of a rich 'culture' is that of sharing knowledge freely among the team members. Think of innovative methods of promoting such a culture in your team and implement them.

Manager must ensure that resources, as appropriate for the job, is available to his team to perform well.

Manager must make sure that his people feel safe in his group, both at the job and otherwise. He must be ever-ready to come forward and protect his people from external issues, either from customers, from other teams, or even internal to the team. Essentially, people should feel being in a secure environment.

Manager must ensure that good things happen to good people, that is most important to keep people cheerful and engaged. In short, a manager should act as the HR for his own group.

Most of that I wanted to talk about are already covered under this section, so I've only a few more items. Hold on!

2. Don't pretend to, but show a genuine interest in peoples' affairs. It is easier to impress people that you're keenly interested in the team's/individual's affairs, while actually ignoring most of them. Couple of managers I'd in the past, adopted this strategy and also had been successful for sometime before they were shoed away by the people in his team. Remember, you may fool some people all the time or even fool all people for some time, but not all people all the time!

3. Practice what you preach. It is very tempting to advice people on things, that you may not even have the most distant idea about. Perhaps, the only reason you do this is, you'd similar advices from your own manager in the past. After all, what's wrong is just passing on good advices? No, you're wrong.

Advices are people-specific and environment-specific. Environment can be anything - ranging from the job, the team, the organization etc. Before giving advices, the manager ought to double-check with his conscience if it makes sense for him and can be implemented in his own life? If not, discard it.

4. Always know the context first, before passing opinions. Don't interfere into your team's issues and offer advices, especially the 'unsolicited' ones, if you don't know the entire context of the issue. You're probably just wasting everybody's time, if you do that.

5. It is not necessary that a manager is super-knowledgeable about everything, and must have opinions on everything that happens in the team. There is nothing so sacred about a manager's position, that he should fear of compromising it, while asking opinions, even from the junior-most engineer in your team. People, infact will respect the manager for it.

6. I'd a manager in the past, who whenever we met in a team meeting or otherwise, used to talk only about what we didn't do, but ignored what we did. He believed that a manager's job is to interfere into team affairs, only when something is terribly bad. The truth is, people, irrespective of the titles they have at their jobs, irrespective of their work environment, and even irrespective of social/economic background, want to be reaffirmed or noticed by others, especially the manager, of their actions and want to get recognized and eventually rewarded for their contributions, in the same order of priority. So, it is suicidal for the manager to ignore, either purposefully or by oversight, the achievements, however small, of his team members.

We'll talk about other interesting aspects of management, when we meet next time. See you soon...

My Management philosophy - I

I've a management philosophy. Well, it's not really mine, but the wisdom that had been passed on for ages and most recently to me, by some of my own managers, and of course through my own learnings and experiences.

I'd been manager for about a year and half during my previous job. It was not a very fruitful job for me, and in fact a burden most of the times. I'd gone through certain most difficult times and absolute pains during this period. I soon realized I didn't have enough orientation to people, and particularly used to get most uncomfortable and impatient when working with people, just the opposite of what you want to see in a manager. I'd advices from various segments of people, some said straight to me that I'm no good at it, go and look at yourself in the mirror and decide if I want to take this up; some others were even harsher and said don't turn and look this side, you're a hard-core technocrat and understand only binaries and logic. There were a few, though, that said "Don't worrry, this is just a starting point. Relax..." and all those beautiful words. Quite a few of my friends told me, "Hey, why do you worry? This is the way it works. You got to be a manager at some point in your career, else you can't survive".

Different opinions left me obviously confused. I started to feel like the father in the story about how he and his son tried to carry a donkey across the river, when he paid attention to and acted based on opinions from the onlookers, unable to make a decision himself and finally ended up losing his son.

My thoughts were already wavering, when I started to get advices on where my career is going? I started to feel that those who opposed the management culture and the need for it are right, and for a long time believed that human minds behaved in too many illogical ways for anybody to comprehend. Having working with pure logic for the past entire decade on engineering software, how can somebody suddently switch to reading people's minds?
Impossible? Unfortunately enough, I still don't know the answer. I am searching for it...

But, now I appreciate the need for good team management for realizing success, more than before. I've worked with teams, which had arguably some of the best and technically bright minds, but had failed miserably to achieve what they envisaged. Not once, but many times. I'd seen people and the teams they were part of, falling apart due to minor misunderstanding between each other or the top management and unable to tune into the organizational goals and focus. I'd seen the team morale taking a dip due to reasons that seemed unknown and incomprehensible to common people. I myself have undergone all these different facets of "mis-management" in my career. It was the most common and the easiest blame game. Whenever we don't see anything working to our satisfaction, we easily blame it on management. But, do we really understand what exactly the failure is? Most of us don't really know, but still prefer to blame the management for all bad things that happened to them, and even their neighbours!

So, I decided to take a break from my 'management career' and pursue some more of that 'technical' bliss, while I spent lots of time learning from many managers in my organization. Not necessarily through 1-1 discussions with managers, but through silent observations. Although I had gone through similar exercises in the past, this one was different because I'd a goal. I'd to decide between technical/management career paths. Following were my key observations...

1. Most of the issues, that decide success/failure of the project, starts from within the team. If suppressed, they can grow to unimaginable proportions and eat up everything precious to you and the team - time, peace of mind and succcess, of course. Surprisingly, if left alone, most of such issues are solved automatically.

2. If you want to taste success, behave yourselves! Remember, there are two ends to a stick; when you're picking up one end, you're picking up the other too. Don't overreact and spoil a 'good' environment, although it's highly tempting to do so! If the envrironment is already tensed up, try not to worsen the situation at the least, if not improve it.

3. People want to be respected. When they feel the lack of it, that is when the problems really start.

4. Managers who are smart enough to understand the team and are good at the management of skills, will end up victorious.

5. Managers need to be technically strong to command respect from his/her people, but it is foolish to imagine that this alone will help.

6. There are not enough 'good' managers around! Perhaps, just a handful. Sad news, but then we've many truly aspring and prospective managers in the future.

There are plenty more smaller observations and conclusions, but the above mentioned pointers essentially constitute the basis for my philosophy about management. We will discuss more about it in the subsequent posts...

My new job...

As you may know already, I recently changed my job. I'm starting to settle down at the new place. I'm meeting up with the people in my team (there are quite a few of them!) one by one. It, frankly, gave me a scare initially merely thinking about the prospect to manage over 20 people that belong to two different products. Being part of a technology driven company and as part of a very demanding industry, it is imperative that the team builds on its expertise and knowledge of the domain more than anything else. Not an easily achievable goal at all.

After I talked to the people, I feel that we're almost there. No exaggerations, but all the people are real good in their field of work. Team leaders swear by them. It is exciting to see the spread of aptitude, skills and experience within the team. Of all, the part I liked best is that most of them believe in creating their own challenges out of their otherwise routine jobs. Some do research work on relevant areas, some develop own automation frameworks and go on to automate a significant part of their work, some keep themselves busy training and giving presentations to the entire company on the team's technologies and domain, some work to develop newer strategies for testing, some contribute to developing better processes..I also started realizing the great learning potential ahead of me, both from a technology and a people management perspective. All this excites me and I eagerly look forward to contribute my lot to the team.

However, all this has significantly raised my responsibilities, much more than I'd imagined when I joined the company. Now, my hope is to be able to maintain the same spirit among the team members as it had been before. I know there are lots of challenges involved, but I hope to keep going and do my best...

I hope...

I'd slept yesterday quite early compared to normal days. I was okay during the first half of the night, but I lost my sleep around 2 am in the morning. Thereafter I was lying awake in my bed for almost an hour. Normally, sleeplessness at night doesn't bother me. In fact, it never had, before. But, yesterday was different. Though you can't exactly term it as a worry, I was anxious about something. In the beginning, even I couldn't understand what was bothering me. But soon, my thoughts started drifting.

The day before was my last day at the office. I said goodbye to all my good friends, conveyed good luck that most people returned, gave a farewell party to all my team-mates, sent mails to long time friends in the company about my leaving...I completed all formalities for my 'exit' yesterday, took the relieving letter, handed over all the company assets and drove off the office, back home. When I left the place, I was contended of having contributed my lot to the company.

During each day of the past 4 years, I had a routine, a very hard one. I will leave my home before 8'o clock in the morning and reach my office before 8.45. Irrespective of whether I've any reason to be there so early, I was there at the same time before anybody else. After reaching my office, again my routine is fixed - from checking my mails in the morning to attending late night meetings. There was hardly any day, I'd any variations.

But, tomorrow will bring a lot of changes to my life. I grew very anxious. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more anxious I became. I even started to feel scared - I exited from my previous job and haven't taken up my new one yet. So, actually, I am jobless for the next 2 days. Will everything go according to the plan? Will there be any last minute surprises? can I manage all this change successfully? What if I failed? What if I grew desperate and wanted to go back to live my old routines? I even started to wonder how did I ever take this foolish decision to leave my old job, choose to opt out of the present, very comfortable way of life, for whatever reasons? I lost my sleep for the next hour or so, for all these stray thoughts.

Sadly, I didn't get any answer to any of these questions, before I slept off finally sometime during the early morning, even without my knowledge. Today morning, when I woke up, suprisingly all those nagging thoughts of mine during the previous night, had gone. Gone for good, I thought. I, no longer seemed to be afraid of the changes that the new job is going to bring into my life. Perhaps, once I go into my new office, I will adapt and adopt to a new routine in my life, which I will (hopefully) live with for the next few years to come. I was full of hope!

However, I still am scared in some corner of my mind that these thoughts will again attack me tonight! and will cause me to stay awake for an hour or two in my bed...Now, there is only one thing I pray for. I wish there was a fast forward button to my life, which will help me forward the next two nights fast enough, and permit me to enter a new life soon afterwards. Once I am there, things will work out smoothly, I am sure...

Are ('nt) you just like me?

Today* morning, I was rearranging the work desk at my office in preparation of my moving to the new place in a short while from now. Very soon I realized that it was no ordinary task that I got involved in, for I had been stuffing lots of books, journals and magazines all through my stay here. It took at least 4 hours (!) for me to dig up and categorize all those stuff into ones that are worth moving to my home or the new office, worth transferring to somebody else, or to the dust bin or destroy before trashing them. Each time I saw a new book or a new magazine or a journal, I would spent sometime on it, thinking about how it came to me originally which increased the time for sorting further more. Many of these books that have been decorating my desk for the past 2 years were brought in from my home when I found that there is no more space left in the cup-boards at home to keep them.

Books (technical books, not stories or novels) had been a weakness for me, as it is for most people working in IT industry. I had this problem of wanting to buy books, even if they had nothing to do with my work. I remember at least 2 times during the past decade, when I ventured on a book buying spree. One of those happened about 8 years ago, when I was at my first job. There were plenty of things that went wrong with my first job, that I decided to change over to another better one. But then, as it is very common among those working in IT, especially a fresher like me, I had this constant prick in my mind that I didn't know enough about my work. So, I decided to get enlightened by buying as many books as I can, even on such subjects that I've never known existed till then. Some of the books I bought during that time were Operating system design, Database designing, Networking with Unix OS, several books on TCP/IP, Mastering Visual C++ and Mastering Java. During the second time, I had a similar enlightenment and bought an equal number of books on management and software engineering of various sizes as if the entire stock of such books will disappear from the store during the next day. Both times, needless to say, I was overwhelmed with some sort of accomplishment after I bought these books from the store. I can clearly remember even today, the store owner asking me if I was buying them for some library! Nobody could ever read those in an empty stomach. And if you read them with a full stomach, you sure will fall asleep within minutes...These books are so powerful, you know!

As it sure will happen with anybody who buys such an awful lot of books, I never went more than 10 pages in any of those books. Till 2 years back, they lied unassuming at my home cupboards and when I really didn't have any space left, I was forced to move those to my office desk. Unlike home, having more and more books in your office desk gives you certain advantages. Firstly, it makes you, in other people's eyes, 'a very knowledgable guy' and an 'efficient manager'. I don't know why it is so, but all managers that I've known in the past, including those I've worked with and many others have lots of books in their desks. I think stacking books at your work desk is a status symbol (ok, at least it is so, in our part of the world). The more books you've at your desk, the better manager you are! Secondly, you don't have to worry about rearranging them, because most of the times, space is never a constraint at the manager's desks. So, for both these reasons, I had piled up enough of those at my desk. I knew that a day would come when I should pack up all these books and move them away. But then, I could move them to another place, another desk at my next office. This could continue forever, till I finally retire from the job! So, I never bothered about it. But, looking at the way things are now (after having experienced the difficulty in moving books for the first time), I think by the time I retire from my job I should perhaps hire a truck to move all my books and at that time, would’ve to spent a fortune to buy a decently sized building to move all my books into:-)

Then, there were many of those journals, brochures and training material that lied all over the place, the ones that I got from various sources during my past 4 years in this organization. Many of those training materials were on soft-skills including time management, stress management, people management, business communication, leadership and so much other bull****. I can't understand why and how I attended any of those. Some of them, I did, because they were mandated by my past managers. Some of them, I guess, just for pastime. Sad to say this, but I can't remember me having put anything I 'learnt' from those training sessions to real use, anytime. I had to really struggle with them to identify which ones not to throw away; frankly speaking, I thought none of them were worth keeping! I even thought it would be a good idea to start my own center to train students on all these subjects, for there was enough material to do that for one or two batches. For whatever material was not available, I could take photocopies of the existing material and give to those who need it. After all, most of material contained in these books were flicked off the internet or from other bigger books. So, I don't think there is anything wrong in doing so, but anyway I don't intend to do that for other reasons. A few others dealt with technical subjects. They were more useful, but many among those were just printouts of ppts. Not really useful, I had to throw away an awful lot.

Some of those who are reading this may brush it aside, but there is some serious learning these experiences have provided me. First, don’t just go around buying books if you don’t really need it. Don’t go by what other people do and blindly take to the industry trends. Sometimes, such trends can be deceiving, like there was a time before the millennium when there was a huge need for mainframe professionals. It won’t matter whether you bought 100 pounds of books worth a fortune on mainframes, all of them will eventually go into dust-bin after the magic year of 2000. Instead, heed to advices from experienced folks (like meJ) around you. If you ask me now, I will tell you 90% of the books I bought during the past 10 years are just waste of money. Only a few really made the difference. It wasn’t after all difficult to identify which ones would help you in the future, at the time of buying.

Secondly, if at all you’re buying books to learn something new, start with the baby steps. Don’t go and buy ‘Mastering VC++’ if you don’t know anything about VC++ or at least know something about object orientated programming. The book will be worth nothing at all to you, except that you can spent some of your time reading the first few pages of it like a novel! But, I’ve known a few innovative people who put it to various other uses – these fat books perfectly suit to adjust the height of your monitor, to meet your eye level or even as a pillow when you want to spend a night in the office for whatever reasons!

Now, when it comes to training classes, I’ve lots to talk about them. This post will overflow, if I tell you all that now. So, we will talk about that during some other time; for the moment, let me just warn you that 90% of training classes (especially the ones that deal with behavioral skills) that promise you the stars, end up being pastimes. I don’t blame the trainers (yes, partly they’re) entirely for this, because most of us ignore to do our homework or even attempt to apply whatever is taught during the training period. So ultimately, we just end up being collectors and stockists of these training materials, which afterwards we will wonder whether to throw out or keep with us.

Just like me!

* I’m posting this write-up, the next day.

Why is History my favorite subject?

I like history. Not because I got 100% marks for this subject in my 10th standard exams. Also not because, it is easier than most other subjects to get more marks by just bluffing your way out in your exam paper. In fact, I found it utmost difficult remembering anything that I read from my history textbooks. Even if I remember, I find it most difficult to reproduce that in paper. The fundamental reason behind that is I can't multi-task; I can only write or think, one at a time, but doing both together is very difficult and takes enormous amount of time and energy. Even today, I have the same problem, but fortunately nobody cares. But, not the same while you write history exams.

So, what do I like about history? A lot. First of all, history is universal. All of us have our own. Even non-living things have history. Organizations have, countries have and the whole planet has. Even time has its own (ever read 'A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking?)

Recently, I listened to the audio-book 'A short history of nearly everything' by Bill Bryson. Exceptional - the content and the presentation, but I liked the content more. Extensiveness of the content and all the research that has gone into writing this book is simply superb. It talks about history of various subjects including physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, genetics, geology and so many more. I'm sure anyone who listens to the book (or reads it) and has some idea about latest happenings in these areas will appreciate the importance of history. Isn't a natural instinct for all of us to want to know how we came to existence? The book says that the first instinct of any living species including humans is to reproduce themselves. I'm sure our need to know more about ourselves, our past, our heritage ranks at least second.

History is nostalgic. You never need to have experienced the past yourself, but still you can be nostalgic about it. Strange, but true. Here are examples, I've known myself.

When I went to the Nandi hills at Bangalore during the last weekend, we visited Tipu Sultan's fort there. My cousin was explaining to me, how the fort was a strategic centre for Tipu and how several wars had been fought between him and the foreign invaders at the very same fort, sometime during the late 18th century. All of a sudden, he got overwhelmed by the subject and started talking as though, he had lived through those ages. I will find it difficult to reproduce all that he told me, but he showed me the exact locations where the war had been fought, explained about the architecture of the fort and how it was strategic to Tipu, how enemies were attacked with the various weapons, how trespassers to the territory were thrown down the aisles to the valley over 1500 meters deep, with their hands and legs tied with rope. For a moment, it sounded like he got invaded by Tipu's soul itself! He was so talkative.

During another such instance at Calcutta, I visited the Victoria Memorial Hall. My niece had been staying in Calcutta for the past several years and grew really fond of its immensely rich history. The entire 2 hours I spent at the museum there, she was talking. Her words were filled with imaginations. For the next 1 hour, she took me to some parts of the city, with many historical buildings in shambles, almost near to death. She especially had a strange connection to those monumental buildings. She told me the people of Calcutta are really proud of those monuments and derive an immense pride of being part of this city. I don't know for sure about other people, but undoubtedly, she was one of such. Although, initially I felt that she was going a bit too far in her craziness, soon I realized even I am no different when it comes to taking pride about our past heritage.

Now, I have this strange habit of spending time imagining things about the past life - for example, the other day I was watching an old (40 years old!) Malayalam movie on the television, which had a 5 minute car chase followed by another 5 minutes of fight scenes between the hero and the villain. Both cars were old 'Ambassador's. Shooting location was somewhere near the central part of Kerala, my native place, both sides of the roads being rice farms spread across the whole area seemingly up to the horizon and everywhere around filled with greenery. Now, here is what I imagine. Perhaps, there is nothing green left there anymore. Perhaps, all these places are now up with multi-floored apartments with not an inch of vacant space available anywhere in vicinity. Perhaps, the place where the fight scene was shot had been converted into the busiest traffic junction in the city. Perhaps, my parents might've visited the place while it was still green and might be they'd spent some good time there when they were children. There could've been umpteen numbers of changes that possibly happened to this place over the past 40 years to this place. If my parents ever visit this place again, will they ever recognize it? Will they ever be able to meet their childhood friends there?

It is very much possible that none of what I imagined really happened; and my parents might never have seen this place anytime during their lives. But, somehow I've this strange affinity to link all of these incidents up and create a story that sounds nostalgic, albeit nothing of this sort ever happened in your own life or the lives of anybody that you know of. It may sound crazy, but entering into other people's minds and imagining about their nostalgic moments can be very satisfying. I know how it feels like. I bet, there are many others like me, out there...

A great read...

This is one of the mails that I received today morning. It was really a great read, although I am not 100% sure of its genuineness. I thought I would share the same with all of you...

**There was a one hour interview on CNBC with Warren Buffet, the second richest man who has donated $31 billion to charity. Here are some very interesting aspects of his life:

1) He bought his first share at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!

2) He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering newspapers.

3) He still lives in the same small 3 bedroom house in mid-town Omaha that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or a
fence.

4) He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or security people around him.

5) He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world's largest private jet company.

6) His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis.

7) He has given his CEO's only two rules.
Rule number 1: do not lose any of your share holder's money.
Rule number 2: Do not forget rule number 1.

8) He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His pastime after he gets home is to make himself some pop corn and watch television.

9) Bill Gates, the world's richest man met him for the first time only 5 years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with Warren Buffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half hour. But when Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of Warren Buffet.

10) Warren Buffet does not carry a cell phone, nor has a computer on his desk.

11) His advice to young people: Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself.

Following is what the writer of the mail had to say as in moral of the story...

• Remember money doesn't create man but it is the man who created money
• Live your life as simple as you are. Don't do what others say, just listen to them, but do what you feel good.
• Don't go on brand name, just wear those things in which you feel comfortable
• Don't waste your money on unnecessary things, just spend on them who really are in need.
• After all it's your life, then why should we give a chance to others to rule our life

Interesting, eh?

An apologetic note

Today morning when I came into the office and looked for the document that contained the 3rd part of the series - I perhaps was sleeping when it all happened- I was in for a shock. The document is missing. I don't have it anymore in my laptop. I'd lost it perhaps during the last week, during my trip to Hyderabad and my presentation there. I don't know how it could've possibly happened. And I don't think I've the time now to recreate all that I wrote almost a week back. So, I am forced to discontinue the series. I apologize to all (and to myself!) for that...

In case, at some future time, all of a sudden, some illuminating consciousness strikes me and causes me to remember all that I wrote in this concluding part of the series, I will share that illumination with all of you. But, till then let's talk about something else...

I perhaps was sleeping when it all happened Part II

This post is a continuation from the first part of this article (my previous post). Read on...

We're all in the process of forgetting what is termed 'the values of life'. This is true not only for individuals, but also corporate houses. There was a time in the history of India, when corporate houses (many of them being government organizations; in fact, many of them, still do) used to value what used to be called as 'employee loyalty'. Both employee and employers used to have long term relationship, a special bond, which kept both going along for years together. Even though small time differences almost always used to crop up, it used to get solved with reasonable effectiveness almost every time. One of the reasons for this, obviously, was the non-availability of choices in those days. But, more than this, there used to an unspeakable something - you may even call it a love, affection, pride - to be associated with an organization in those days. The organization used to recognize this, accept and reward those who remained loyal with them for longer periods.

But, today, this term doesn’t exist in our dictionary. Companies don’t care for individuals, as well as the situation used to be. People have become just ‘resources’ (if you’ve ever been through a typical software project scheduling exercise, you know what I mean), and can be replaced by anybody else. Moreover, the industry never faces a dearth of enough manpower in a country that produces more than a half a million engineering graduates passing out of colleges every year. Industry tends to think that any ‘resource’ can be swapped, with some amount of training provided to the new ‘resource’. But, sadly, none of those who think likewise wants/likes to think about the adequacy of such a training program. The more important point is, although the people can be trained on almost any aspect of work (including domain knowledge), there is one significant part of people that can never be trained – the mind. It is impossible to train people on attitude and motivation towards their work. I don’t think companies don’t realize this. They do, but they choose to ignore this…

Given all this, if you talk about loyalty and stick around in the same company for more than 3-4 years, people will laugh at you. People will even start looking at you suspiciously. What perhaps would’ve landed you up in lime-light more than a decade back, will cause you to undergo undue mental stress. If you don’t understand me well, I will give you an example. Let us say, we’ve a guy X working for Y organization for the past 3-4 years, and the appraisal time at his organization is fast approaching. One of these days, X meets with his friend A, who works for B organization. Both of them engage in a casual conversation, which will invariably end up in a talk about each other’s profession. Three things will be discussed almost always - Work, Manager and compensation. Both will vent out each other’s frustration on these aspects and will highlight all ‘bad’ things that is happening with them in their respective companies. However close they are, these friends will never speak about certain things. For example, they will not discuss about 1) good things that happened with them at work 2) anything bad that occurred from their own end that may’ve caused issues at work. Before they part, they must’ve discussed about other opportunities in the industry, about compensations etc. Now, the second guy promises his friend to help him push his resume through the organization he is working for. The first guy is obviously happy at his friend’s helpful mentality, but what he doesn’t know is that his friend - the second guy in our story - has been actively trying to switch jobs already for the past few months!

Do you see similarities with your own professional life? I am not saying that this is what always happens, but to a large extent, unhappiness (or the perception of it) crops up through one’s friends. Once this incident happens with you, you can never remain inactive. It is human tendency to want for more, more money, more fame, more acceptance, and hence even the sternest mind starts to waver. Presently, you are in great mental stress to quit what you’re doing now and move to a greener pasture. This phenomenon is termed peer pressure.

There is another much similar one called societal pressure, that we will discuss in the concluding part of this article...

I perhaps was sleeping when it all happened - Part I

Here, in this 3 part article, I am attempting to analyze the Indian IT scenario today, from a people management perspective. Contrary to what most articles will do, let me tell you straight away my conclusion - it doesn’t look all that rosy. In fact, it is quite grave and scary and my feeling is that we will shortly face another breakdown like during the dotcom bust. It will be too devastating and the entire world will get affected by this. However, good news is that the key to this lies with us – the people of this country. We are the ones, the only ones, who can stop this break-up.

Consider this. The team that I am working on right now consists of around 65 people. During the beginning of the year, we started with around 70. We hired at least 10 people this year. A little arithmetic will tell you that we've lost over 15 people this year. This is 25% attrition within our team alone. Similar attrition is there in most other teams in our company. Dear HR guys, I'm sorry to say, how much ever you try to hide or makeup, I bet the overall attrition is around this number. In fact, you don't need to try to hide this at all. This is an open secret that is known to the entire population in our industry*. If you analyze the reasons for people leaving their companies, it boils down to the following two - 1) his/her manager 2) Compensation

There can be a third (or even fourth) occasional addition to this, but majority people consider these two as their major sufferings. I want to be clear on this, people 'consider' these as their sufferings, though in many (or most cases) the actuality may be different. I can see your lips moving to ask me, how can you say that, you Brutus? If any of my IT friends who've moved at least one company in their lives (I bet they've) are reading this, you can consider yourself as one of the data points in my analysis.

Many have told their stories to me, about how his/her manager is indifferent to them, treating them like dirt. But, know that, I've added a few data points to this, from my own career too. Though either of these are not the exact reasons for my leaving any of my previous companies (as my previous posts will tell you), the sum of parts is greater than the parts themselves - I believe, most of you can understand what I meant here...

Why are we like this? I'm sure that all those of you who've grown up in Indian environment, were taught during our childhood to be more tenable, more adjustable to situations and not to be too demanding? Why do we have such an impatient, short temperament, when we deal with work more than those related to home, your wife, your kids, your parents? Just think. If your parents behaved rashly to you, would you choose to leave them and get another set of parents? Sounds funny? Some of you are already asking me, how can I compare my parents with my manager at work? It sounds like the most ridiculous comparison, right? Maybe I'm taking it a bit too far, but if the two are not worthy of comparison, at least the situations are similar or metaphorically related. However, it may not be too right to say that the new-age people will patiently suffer with their spouses, even for a few days! That is the reason we're seeing too many divorces today. Society promptly blames it on the influence from the west for the ever- increasing divorce cases. So, reading two and two together, don't you think the reason for all this is that we are increasingly getting westernized, materialistic and completely transactional? Let us go a little more in the same direction…

My motivators...

In my last post, I talked about motivation and how I managed with a little of that, which ended me up in creating a website and through that an exciting career move. Ok, let's be practical; creating a website doesn't have much to do with as big as a career move, but in my case it was just incidental. So, don’t get carried away too much by what I just said!

My wife reads all my posts to this blog, and likewise read this one too. It led us to a big discussion, the essence of which was how and from where all of us manage to get our motivation. It made both of us to think aloud for about an hour, and at the end I felt good as if I had discovered myself! I would like to share some of those thoughts with you...

For those who know close enough from my childhood (there aren't many of them) or those who've read my auto-biographical notes (and this one too) in my website would identify me as one of the most confused, scared and diffident child they might've ever met. The most fundamental trait of me is that of being sensitive, actually hyper-sensitive (if there exists a word like that!). There was a time of my life, when I was an absolute introvert. I was easily overwhelmed with grief and guilt, when I wasn’t able to do something that somebody else expected me to, whoever it may be. All this only aggravated my condition and caused me to struggle a lot in life, and hence I deliberately wanted to change sometime down. Hard experiences of life taught me not to be what I had been, but at least try and create a defense mechanism to protect me from all these ‘self-allegations’.

I tried hard, but didn’t get much success out of my efforts. But, during the latter part of my professional career, I started to realize that my personality changed a very lot from every possible angle – and to my surprise, I realized that lot of that had happened even without my knowledge. These shifts in viewpoints and personality traits didn’t happen overnight, but over the years, kick-started probably after my college days, but lot of that still remains etched in my mind somewhere. I basically am all the above even today.

Those are the basic building blocks of my life. If I declare that these very things that I so desperately wanted to change in me were the very reasons for my motivation, aren’t you surprised? I bet you are. It surprised me as well initially, but thinking over it again and again, I found that it is true!

Let’s take striking examples. I strive to be always perfect over whatever I do, be it in personal and in professional life. To a large extent, I owe this habit to my father who is a perfectionist. But, I perfected this art over the years and learnt to be punctual, issueless regarding all aspects of life. I didn’t attain this magically. The simple reason is, I am very afraid of criticism! Sometimes, I even have nightmares of people blaming me for not having done something they wanted me to.

I try my best to be pro-active and follow up all that work that people want get done from me. Sometimes, I succeed and other times I get brick-bats. But, when the latter happens, I don’t get overwhelmed with grief as I used to once. Of course, I do get saddened, but I can’t afford to let that overcome me for long. Why and how did I achieve this? Nothing great have I done. Because of the simple reason that my past experiences tell me that, if I remain overwhelmed with grief over something that happened in the past, I will lose my time on my next assignment. It killed me several times in the past, which in turn led to more sorrowful incidents. I was just afraid of all this. I couldn’t stand people looking at me strangely, when something is not properly done from my side. I can’t help imagining all sorts of things people have in mind about me. I want all people to talk only great things about me! I break-down otherwise.

Peer pressure is something that is invisible, but drives you nuts. A similar one, is that of societal pressure – both of these are not probably that prominent in the western countries, but not so in India. From the day one at school, you are being compared to your friends – comparisons at schools, whether it is with respect to studies, or any extra curricular activities. Competition is so intense in Indian scenario in every walk of life, that it is impossible for any Indian child to left untouched by it. Moreover, the Indian society gives respect to such people who are competitive, and are achievers. People are often judged by designations, rather than the pure ability to achieve. As a simple example, a person designated as a manager is respected more than anybody else, even if he is extremely knowledgeable and skilled to do what he is working on – irrespective of whether the former is too dumb to know anything about what he is doing (and most probably it is!)

Over the years, I learnt many new technologies that is unusual to expect from an average guy that I was. Again, I didn’t achieve this magically. I was afraid of being left out all alone, among my colleagues who may learn all these and get past me someday. When I was a kid, my elder sister was always better than me in every single respect and used to take away all praises from my parents. I used to end up a laughing stock in our family. This tired me no end. This experience from my childhood days still haunt me, and hence can’t imagine being left behind in anything, be at the professional or the personal front. It urges me to learn more and be in the forefront.

In short, I am what I am today, only because of my limitations. Luckily for me, all of that ended up doing me good. Even if I am aware of all this, I don’t want to change – the truth is, I can’t change – because it has done so much good to my life.

So, my conclusion from all this is that one’s limitations (whether physical/psychological) can be the best motivators in his/her life. Don’t try to underplay or outsmart your limitations; if you try to, you will thrown out of the rails of life. Go along the tunnel, even if it’s pitch dark, and someday you will find the gleaming bright light at the end of the it…