Service your customer at the right time

I went to an Indian restaurant near my home for lunch. My wife is not in town and I am not the greatest fan of my own cooking. Nowadays, most of these guys offer the "one-size-fits-all" buffet for lunch, which is good for the owners, not so good for the customers. Still, I went forward, took the plate and went straight to the "Non-vegetarian" section.

I opened the food warmer on the appetizers, which was named - "Tandoori Chicken". And I didn't find a single piece. I was disappointed, but I was so hungry that I decided to move on to the rest of the buffet table. I served myself some hot naans and curries. And went back to my table. On my way back, I told the waiter that the Tandoori Chicken container is empty. He told me he was sorry about it and offered to bring the chicken "fresh" from the kitchen, RIGHT AWAY.

I loved Tandoori Chicken and was ready to wait a few minutes before starting my meal. 5 minutes went by. There was no tandoori chicken. I wasn't able to fight my hunger. So, I started eating my main course (which typically is naan bread and curry).

After 15 minutes, the waiter brought me my Tandoori Chicken, hot from the kitchen. By that time, I was having my desserts. Now, my penchant for Tandoori Chicken, forced me to eat them, even though it had missed its chance. The worst part was that it tasted terrible. To serve me quick, they brought it without the "Tandooriness" in it.

Now, you serve late. You have already missed the bus. But you still try to catch up, which is good. But you serve bad. I am sure I won't go back to that restaurant ever.

When I was driving back, I started empathizing for the customers whom I would have worked with. There have been projects when we have delayed deliveries. We missed the bus. Even when we delivered good afterwards, it was late. Our code just missed the customer's taste buds. I remember we cursing them for not being empathetic for our hard work and great quality code. I just realized - "It doesn't matter"

It is very critical to know how important is something for your customer, not just quality-wise, but "time-wise". Even if I received a great pizza from Pizza hut, but if it is 30 mins late, I wouldn't be too happy with them.

How EZPass taught me to reason beyond the obvious?

It was a simple lesson learnt. Whenever I cross the tolls in the EZPass lane and happen to see the front-of-me motorists'  EZPass status alerting - "Go, Low Bal(ance)", I always thought that the guy had forgotten to re-fill his EZPass. It is right most of the times, but not all the times. Now the "minority" reason never occurred to me and I always thought that could be the only reason.

A few days back, my EZPass also started showing the same alert whenever I crossed the lane - "Go, Low Bal". Now, I had setup automatic refills and how could that happen. Then I realised that I had replaced my lost credit card a month back and the EZPass had the automatic payment on that lost credit card.

The core reason for my EZPass status alerting was not that I forgot to recharge it, but I expected the recharge to work automatically, but didn't work because of a failed  payment. That could have been the reason for many of the motorists that I see who gets alerted, though not a majority, as you don't expect the credit card payments to fail.

The obvious reason (motorists forgetting to refill) was so obvious that it completely masked me from other potential causes (failed payment gateways) and only experience taught me that there could be multiple reasons for a failure.

So, whenever there is a screaming, obvious reason in front of you for a failure, don't get dissolved in it. There might be also non-obvious reasons for a failure, which you might completely miss.

Attrition promotions

The Indian IT industry suffers from a real bad phenomenon. - Attrition promotions.

Let's say you are a super technical brain and is the most sought by your client. The client loves you and thereby your boss also loves you.

Now, you decide it's time to move on. Because the job doesn't interest you anymore. So, you open up the monopolistic email client "MS Exchange" and start happily typing your resignation letter. And then you click "Send".

A few hours later, if you are a super performer, you will be stunned with the number of calls you receive asking you to reverse the decision, as you are the most critical "bolt" in the engine.

Finally if nothing works, they promise "Promotion".

And then if you are person who loves power, you would gleefully accept it and work for another 3 years, before you send the next resignation letter.

Now, this is what I call as an Attrition promotion. To stop losing you, they promote you.

The industry is flooded with such wrong promotions at the wrong time. You should get promoted, when you are found capable and not when you want to leave the organization.

Instead of a promotion, the organizations can challenge their employee with some meaty work and equivalent pay. Promotions signal a wrong direction. Promotions mean that the organization is ready to wide the peak of the ladder.

Don't promote to make the guy stay in your company. If you find him capable, do it upfront or else don't do it.

A hair dresser's "Just for fun" past-time

Yesterday, when I was having my haircut, after a long 3 month break, my hair dresser asked me...

Hair dresser: "Sir, where are you from?"
Me: "India"
Hair dresser: "What do you do?"
Me: "Guess?"
Hair dresser: "So, if you are from India, you should be a software guy. Right?"
Me: "Perfect. Thanks to clustering algorithms in data mining"

I knew what he does, but I went on to ask him, what else does he do? He told me he takes MIT Online computer science classes once he goes back home and has been learning programming to write some apps for iPhone.

So, I asked him why is he doing all this?

"Just for fun".

Wow. That hit me like a bullet. Learning computer algorithms after a day's job of standing and dressing people's torn hair and that too for fun...I personally was ashamed of myself.

"When was the last time I learnt a new programming language and that too for fun....And I call myself a software guy..."

Realized that being in IT for a decade, has stained me with the whole notion of "cost-benefit" analysis. For everything, I look for a cost and benefit.

"What benefit do I get by learning Python?"
"What benefit do I get by learning clustering algorithms?"

It was a rude awakening. Probably fun is the benefit....