Deadlines or Resultlines

I have learnt to say "No" when my team members ask me "Senthil, Are there any timelines or deadlines?". A difficult one to utter, when you know you are placing too much trust on some body's commitment and interest. But I have had my share of luck so far. Success rate of 1 on 7.

Deadlines force you to think of dates rather than the outcome. Deadlines are music to the managers, but not to the solution itself. Is any woman given a deadline to deliver a baby? She needs to deliver a baby. That's it. It is outcome bound and not time bound. But does that mean that you will keep waiting forever till the solution is reached. Not necessarily, unless you have the funding to do so. I don't have that sort of liberty. I just stop the project. If I don't see outcomes or any kind of progress, I stop it. If I don't see the truck moving, (the pace doesn't matter), I abort it. It was an experimentation. With this approach, either I have quality deliverable or no deliverable at all. I call them "Resultlines".

Let me know whether it works for you or not.

Are you surrounded by irrational blockheads?

I admire Jason Fried, co-founder of 37 signals (37signals.com) a lot. His management theories are very simple to understand and hence easy to follow. They taste bitter for people who have been following astronomical, corporate lessons.

I have been lately working on a couple of consulting assignments, helping customers to strategize their BI landscape. I have taken up this principle not to give my customers too much of "visioning" masala and keep the strategy as simple and as worldly as possible. No bloat. Just give them what is required and what is implementable. My experiment gave me 50% success rate. But it gave me a 100% success rate in identifying a lot of irrational jackasses around me. How? Simple. They just couldn't understand simple things. When things were complicated and swollen, they loved it. When things were simple, they hated it. So what do you do with such blockheads? Ignore them? No. You can't. They are all around you.
Fire them? No. You can't. They are the heap in the organization.
Love them? No. You can't. You are smart and you will naturally hate them.
I decided to let them know they are imbecile, straight on their face. I decided to hurt their ego. I decided to make them feel that they are adding spam to the conversations. In this process, I was perceived to be arrogant. Who cares?

Is lateral learning an investment or an obligation?

I was interviewing one of my colleagues for an engineering position in my labs group. In fact, it started out as a request from my end to join this elite group. This group focuses on experimenting new features of a product and discovers business scenarios that would fit the bill for that particular feature. This group also fixates on identifying & abstracting reusable design patterns, which then can be serviced to various projects for specific implementations. Sounds interesting? I believed so, but my fellow colleagues didn't feel so.

The reason. "I have my project tasks to accomplish which fills in most of my day's time. I wont have time to contribute to this cause". I wondered why is it a cause. Then I realized the equation was about relating time spent to perceivable returns (appraisal comments). They felt learning a new feature outside the scope of a project was a very bad bargain. They felt it was an obligation that they were doing to the community and not to themselves.

When will the IT professionals realize that "lateral learning" (learning outside the scope of the project) is an investment to their own professional growth and not an obligation to their organization?

Saravana Bhavan and IT Services

This weekend, I had the chance to grab a morning "tiffen" at Saravana Bhavan (SB), a premier vegetarian restaurant in Chennai. As most South Indians would be knowing, SB charges a premium price for all their products. The reason: Mouth watering quality food. I ate "Aappam". It is customarily served with cocunut milk and it was truly mouth watering. Expectations met and also surpassed. I ordered one more only to realise that the second one was too heavy for my stomach. But I was satisfied.

If I have to draw parallels between SB's services and IT-enabled services, today's customers consuming IT services are starved; starved of quality. When did your customers feel that your quality of work was lip-smacking? Assume that the day he compares your work to a lip smacking delicacy, you have reached the pinnacle of quality service.

Tell me some of your experiences where the customer truly lip smacked.

Is Corporate fidelity foolishness?

I have been working with the same organization for the past 7.5 years. Multiple reasons:

1. No confidence in the rest of the IT companies.
2. 10% fidelity to the company that offered me the first job.
3. A conservative IT professional who outweighs risks to opportunities.

But lately I am realizing that my risk-taking ability is on the downward trend. I have been just thinking about how can I grow in the same ladder that I stepped into 7 years back. Is that good or bad? I don't know. Is it a good strategy to root your career on a single company, no matter how good the company is?

I really don't have an answer. What do you think?

Managers and Moms

I work with a lot of managers, who just TALK or RANT. They are so impressive with their theoretical palaver that sometimes you feel they are there in that position for some good reason. Now, 2 days later, when the tsunami effect subsides, that's when you realise what they left behind in your mind is what a tsunami would leave behind. A pile of litter. What happens now is that you need to clean what they left behind and again have to crave for what you were looking for.

I will give you an example. Lets assume your day starts with a catastrophe. Going to work. And you want to come over this noxious pattern. So you decide to approach your manager. You have done the first mistake. Why? Simple. When you are sick, do you go and tell your mom that you are sick or does she automatically find out you are sick? Rarely the former happens. A manager should be able to figure out that his or her team member is going through a tough phase and should proactively come and talk. If they didn't, then you are approaching a person who doesn't care till you are completely bruised.

Now that your manager doesn't have his sensory glands on his high priority list, you decide to walk up to him and call for a quick meeting. So you both enter into this meeting room and when your eyes meet, you carry that nasty smile which tells that you are not happy and you need some help. So you start pouring out your angry magma. Now its the time for our manager to show that he cares for you and he will bring back the euphoria that you lacked in your work life. What he does. He starts ranting. He would rant from his experience or from SELF-HELP books that he would have read when he was like you. He would bring all his management degree lessons into play. And then finally he would quote so many examples, that you would feel wow.

Now, try this. After 2 days, go back to him and tell him that you are in the same state as you were previously(you would be most of the times). See what he does. If he pushes off saying "I am little busy. Will catch you later", you know whether you approached the right person or not.

Is it sane to expect a manager to be so empathetic? Yes, why not.

Let me know your opinions.

Bureaucracy Unlimited

Over the past 4 weeks, I have been writing a document that measures up to 90 pages.
Value: Nothing. Reason: Somebody's Pleasure from Size. Profit: Pleasure from size. Loss: 4 weeks. And the stress from writing a MS Word document.

I often find myself in a position where I need to do stuff to satiate somebody else's pleasures. Why? Bureaucratic nature of the organizations that we work for. Why cant you say "No" when you want to? Why are we threatened by the feeling that if I say "No" today, I might be looked upon as a "Non-leverage able resource" tomorrow? Do you work for an organization that gives you the space to say "No" and still appreciates you for saying that? Do you spend a lot of time doing stuff that really doesn't matter? Are you wrong or the organization that you work for is wrong?

Are you working for an organization where Bureaucracy is unlimited, where you work for quenching somebody else's thirst and not yours? If you are, then it is time for you to wake up from the deep sleep.

Even a stopped clock is right twice in a day.BS.

How many of us rule out not-so-good (corporate term for BS) programmers from our projects after our first encounter with them? A lot of us. I did. There was this programmer who asked me how to calculate ratios & percentages. I didn't want him in my second project. Was my decision correct? Probably right at that moment. And I would argue that it is correct today also.

One of my bosses argued that we should give time for him to improve. Why? Wasn't he given 12 years at school to learn basics & fundamentals? If he didn't learn that time, he will not learn now also. He might learn ratios & percentages now. But he would miss on some other fundamental.

A stopped clock is right twice a day and is wrong 1338 times.

Arrogance is okay

"I want to travel on site, else I will put in my papers".
"I don't want to take up this project, because it is not my interest"
"How can I work on a support project? I am a creator"

We hear these often from our own vocal chords. I am a big proponent of letting your tongue speak your mind. I encourage people who openly tell what they want, even if it means it would cause a 1000 m deep crater in your heart. I encourage them to be arrogant. You never know if it is arrogance or self confidence. In my perspective, it is a fine line.

My reasoning to this argument arises for a simple IF-THEN-ELSE clause statement. Let me explain it below.

IF (WANT_TO_TRAVEL_ONSITE=TRUE and REQUEST=IMMEDIATE and TELL_IT_OUT = TRUE)
{
IF(REQUEST = ACCEPTED)
THEN YOU_ARE_HAPPY;
ORGANIZATION_IS_NEITHER_HAPPY_NOR_SAD;
ELSE
{
YOU_THREATEN_TO_RESIGN;
IF(YOU=EXCELLENT_ASSET)
{
RESIGNATION = DENIED;
YOU_ARE_PERMITTED_TO_TRAVEL_ONSITE;
YOU_ARE_HAPPY;
ORGANIZATION_IS_NEITHER_HAPPY_NOR_SAD;
}
IF(YOU= NOT_SO_EXCELLENT_ASSET)
{
RESIGNATION = ACCEPTED;
YOU_QUIT;
YOU_ARE_NOT_HAPPY;
ORGANIZATION_IS_NEITHER_HAPPY_NOR_SAD;
}
}


}
IF (WANT_TO_TRAVEL_ONSITE=TRUE and REQUEST=IMMEDIATE and TELL_IT_OUT = FALSE)
{
YOU_ARE_NOT_HAPPY;
ORGANIZATION_IS_NEITHER_HAPPY_NOR_SAD;
}

From the above funny logic, it looks like the probability of you being happy is when you tell it out and demand what you want (arrogance might be a corporate term). Because the organization is neither going to be happy nor sad by your demands. The logic can be hacked in many different ways, but I believe to explain something very abstract, a simple rule can highlight the most probable event. So arrogance is okay, demanding what you want is okay. Because the end result should be the one that makes you happy.

Having attrition problems? Try a nice gesture

Last week, Airtel sent me a personalized calendar. I felt special. I know that I would stick with Airtel services for the rest of the year. I started thinking when was the last time I showed a nice gesture to my team members. I wasn't able to recollect. Long time. Probably never did.

My contemplation was if I show a nice gesture all of a sudden, wont it be too artificial? Wont it be too corporate-ish? Probably yes. But who cares. I knew that Airtel sent me to make me special and also to make me glued to them for one more year, although I have been enjoying their services.

A nice gesture could be anything. I know of a manager who picks his team member and drops him regularly (though it is off-route from him). Show it regularly and probably you don't have to worry too much about attrition or productivity loss.

Is cribbing good?

"Man, the job sucks!!!"
"My PM is God's revenge on humanity"
"What is the status update?"...2 hours later..."What is the status update?"...
"I slog. WTF, I get just 15% hike and he gets a 15.5% hike"

"Not possible..."..."The problem is..." "The issues are...." "The estimates are screwed up...".... the morning sermon from the majority of the IT population.

Aren't we so used to this cribbing? Aren't we so diligent in taking tea breaks to vent our frustration on the system, people, strategies, processes, etc..? Yes. We are. I do. I do a lot.

But one fine day (today), I realized, that cribbing does help you to squeeze out the stacked up grief from your system. Its a good thing. Do it everyday. Allocate time out for cribbing. Keep squeezing out till it empties out (just like a toothpaste). One day, you will be so bored of cribbing, that the natural tendency is for you to start thinking about solutions. You have to crib. If you don't crib, you wont even know what you are unhappy with.

My suggestion would be for organizations to have scheduled cribbing sessions/meetings. It might work. The reason is because as techies, we hate these meetings so much, that we would start hating these cribbing meetings and soon we might not crib at all or if we are super-cribbers we would start cribbing about the cribbing sessions...Who knows...

I am going to give it a try.

Help, dont scare

Unusually, my inbox was flooded with "alert" (spam) emails from the Performance Appraisal system. The system demands that I fill up my objectives of the year before I start the year and get it reviewed with my Appraiser at the closure of the year and assess where I stand. Decent logic. Does it work? It hasn't worked for me. And I am sure lots of my colleagues would agree with me. So, what is the problem? One of the cases where a theorem failed to deliver a concrete proof, but was still awarded a Nobel prize. I will explain it in detail.

The theorem is "Penning down your goals at the start of the year/project and assessing at the end of the year/project makes your company understand your performance better and helps you grow in the corporate ladder". Decent theorem, though I am not fully convinced.

The proof is "Use a system which keeps alerting (scaring) you saying that you dont fill up, your increments/hikes are screwed". The solution is paralyzing. What you end up doing is copy some default objectives from somewhere, customize it to what you know you can do or did (rather than what you want to do) and at the end of the year/project, proudly claim that you have done it. The appraiser appraises you, gives you a rating and the system normalizes and then you get your increment. You step up in the corporate ladder.

Isnt it scary? Did your Mom ever use such a system to bring you up? But still she knew exactly what you wanted to do, what you did and what she wanted you to do. There wouldnt be any formal session where you would sit and review your progress at the end of the year. Argument could be my mom never had 10,000 kids. Counter argument is "Then design one, which solves, not scares". Design a system which mimics a Mom's nurturing mechanism.