Sameer seems to have discovered the kisaan mandis recently: he's on a twitpic spree of late. That made me go back and think about my days in Chandigarh, and the mandis.

If you've never been there, it's very difficult to describe them. In all the other places I've stayed at ( and there've been quite a few), there's absolutely nothing like them.

The kisaan mandi is basically a travelling mandi: on different days of the week, it goes to different sectors in the city. Spreads out over a large ground, very well organised into a grid, with two sections: one sitting on the ground, another on thelas.

The experience shopping in these mandis is fantastic. Shopping for veggies and fruits in all other places in India is pathetic by comparison. Everything is very fresh, and quality is very high: one can blindly pick up any pieces, unlike other places where one has to carefully pick and choose each individual piece. In fact, for some vegetables, the vendors won't allow you to pick and select, and you don't mind it!

You'd wonder why I'm getting so excited about something as mundane as vegetable shopping, but it is so good. Every week, we would come back with a couple of big cloth bags completely full, and would run out before the week was over. Later, in Noida and Mumbai, we would buy half, and would still last more than a week.

The freshness, quality and variety on offer made sure we ate quite a bit of the wholesome food. Unfortunately, that no longer happens with us, and I hate going veggie shopping now.

Longing for Chandigarh now... there were so many things perfect about it. Sigh...

While email has been around for a while, they haven't been around enough for us to really get a sense of it as a communication  medium.

There are lots of communication blunders people make on email. Most are just irritating, but some can be disastrous!
The irritants are themselves the subject for another post.

The one I want to talk about right now is the dangerous one: managing by email.

In my view, email's good for:

• sharing information: this could include status updates, documents etc.
  
• recording conversations: summarising discussions, ensuring everyone's come out with the same understanding etc.
• basic transaction workflow: leave applications, expense reimbursements, other transactional flows where ambiguity doesn't exist.

Email's not good for discussions. Discussions are best done face to face. Even phone's better!
There are so many aspects of communication that are absent over email, nuances that completely get missed. You're dependent only on what text can give you: italics, bold, bullet points etc. Body language's missing, facial expressions are missing, voice and tone are missing! You're basically guessing at what's the objective of the message at the other side.

It's asynchronous, so you can't control how the recipient receives the message: they can choose to skim through the message, or read only the first few lines, or read it backwards, basically any way other than the one you intended! You might structure it as much as you want, but you can't control how the reader's going to read! Add the complexities of inlining comments, and it gets messier!

It's not interactive, which has big limitations of it's own. You basically have to guess at how the conversation would go, and put a lot of content out there.

Add to that the fact that people's attention spans are very short for email: often, they are in a meeting or a conversation with someone else when they read an email: or working on some other task: so their mind is really elsewhere! Big chance that they would take away bits and pieces of the message, ending up with something far different from what you intended to convey!

And finally, the fact, at least in India, that people are not very perceptive about the use of the written word: try and add nuances and tones in your email, and it will be lost on most people. If you point those out later, you'd be branded as being guilty of splitting hair...

I've been in situations where relationships have gone bad over time over emails. And because most discussions would happen over emails, there was very little need or occasion to talk in person, making things even worse.

So, my proverbial two cents: don't do any important discussions over email. No. Never. Not once.
Push it out to a face to face meeting. If not possible, pick up the phone. If still not possible, delay responding: perhaps that'll give time for a call or in-person meeting.

The only situations when it might be ok to do it are where you're sure that you've got very strong understanding with the other people involved, and be careful there as well!

If you're a manager, find time to meet your team at least once a week. Mark 30 minutes on your calendar every week for each of your direct reports.

Don't leave it to email or phone.

Don't let it slide: it will come back to hurt over the long run.

Use those 30 minutes to bring up all concerns and review all discussion items, even if you've gone over them via email.

Try and do the same with your manager. If they are unable to find time, be even more careful about email.
If your manager can't find 30 minutes a week for work related discussions with you, you're better off elsewhere!

On Hari's request, the first 15 that came to mind...

1. All About Eve
2. Lekin
3. Seabiscuit
4. Forest Gump
5. Main Meri Patni aur woh
6. Sujatha
7. Requiem for a Dream
8. Crash
9. The Green Mile
10. If Only
11. The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain
12. Amelie
13. Chocolat
14.Life is beautiful
15. Malena

You Can't Get Different Results Doing the Same Thing

The first paragraph sounds so familiar!
This makes so much sense, one wonders why we don't get it.

Good ones:

http://karyng.typepad.com/soaking_in_samsara/2008/11/what-i-have-learned-about-leadership.html

I specially like #2,3,4.

I have this mental model of people at work. I divide them into two categories:

White Box: People who's style of work and thinking is clear and transparent. People who can tell you how they think, how they do what they do, how did they fix that problem, and why did they take a particular decision.

Black Box: People who's style of working is thinking is not clear. When they deliver, you don't know how and why they did. When they fail, you don't know why they failed.

You'll find both kinds of people around you. And there will be 'good' people in both categories: people who deliver consistently.

Software development is full of both kinds of people. I've seen a few that will be able to quickly resolve a crisis or a weird bug. But if you ask them how they did it, or why, or sometimes even what(!), they don't have an answer. Their motto often is " Just tell me what to do, then go away, don't bother me. Come back to me in 2 days, and this thing will be done". These are the black boxes. Very scary, because you're always wondering: will it be solved this time?

I also think that the white box box people have a better sense of self. They are less likely to be surprised at such workplace events as the performance appraisal.

I strongly believe that in roles that have ambiguity, you must have the white box variety. The trouble with the black box variety is that you don't know why they succeed. When the situation involves a large number of variables, the environment is changing all around you, I feel safer if I can feel confidence in the inherent ability of the people, rather than their history of success. Because in a changing environment, history is not a good predictor of future. But inherent ability is!

Perhaps my white box people are the people with strong analytical skills, and the black box people are the ones with weaker analysis? Maybe. But there might be more. For instance, the ability to communicate the analysis is important. As is the ability to understand your own mind!

I've now been part of three startups. One of them as a founder, and the other two as a part of the management team.

I often compare the other two founders in my mind. One of the big differences between the two has been that one is more than happy to let go... of control. He's believed enough in his team to delegate and forget. Of course, there are some checks in terms of discussions, reporting etc., but by and large the team has the ability to take decisions.

The other one has not found it easy to do that. Most decisions flow from the top, the team feels constrained. He is involved at a very minute level of detail, when perhaps he needs to leave those to the team and concentrate on other things. This inability to believe in his people, I think, is costing the company dear.

In our own case, perhaps we did even worse. We believed in the team too much. Not that the individuals were not capable enough; but you need to balance delegation with reporting and monitoring. Otherwise, you're dependent on the capability of only one person. In a startup, that can be fatal, as processes don't exist to catch mistakes, and the environment is too fluid.

One of these companies can be considered a clear success. The other one, a little early to decide.

Here's another take on this issue, from an entrepreneurs.
Building an open culture

My own thought, as an entrepreneur, is that the way to do this right is to hire people that you can rely on in a white box (more on that in another post, but basically someone you can rely on because of the way they work) mode.

Once you've got those people, delegate like crazy, and allow them to take decisions. Let them be entrepreneurs in the garb of an employee.

I like to think I did that well in my own company. Will I call my company a success? Not in the financial sense, but I think the reasons were elsewhere. Did we hire the right people? Absolutely yes. If and when I start another company, quite a few of them would be the first set of people I'd look to hire.

Don’t Stop for Gas… We’re Already Late! » 6th Sense Analytics

Great post. Love the thought about confusing activity and progress.

Support functions in all organisations: I think they have got it absolutely wrong.
Most of them are so utterly fixated on rules and processes, one wonders if they leave their brains at home!

Their existence itself is to 'support'. That's the nature of their work. But all of them, without fail, across almost all organisations, take upon themselves a 'higher' meaning: as if their existence itself is the reason for their existence.

IT support, finance, payroll, admin... Does any of them not do this? HR, sometimes, is one exception.

On top of that, they will not hesitate from using regulatory or technical reasons to avoid answering the question Why can't it be done? Hoping that most of the people will get deterred by it. When actually almost all the time, there is no underlying technical or regulatory reason at all!

Some recent examples:

• We have to deduct both income tax and FBT on your allowance. Because that's how the government wants it. Real reason:I can't be bothered to take the effort to track your allowances.
  
• We can't deduct extra tax from your income, even if you give us a written request. We are not allowed to do it. Real reason: I don't have any idea how this works, no one's asked before, I can't be bothered to go read up the rules.
• I need an urgent salary advance. It is approved by the head of HR AND my manager. Oh, well, oops. Needs approval of the CFO too. By the way, we will send you a check for the advance, not deposit it directly to your salary account. And did we mention, the check will be on a different bank, so that it will take 3 days after you deposit the check for money to come in? Of course, it's the 29th already, so your normal salary would probably have come in sooner!

These were the finance guys. The other ones, some other time.

If only they could change from Why it can't be done to Let's find out how we can make it happen!

In political or social discourse, or even in the drawing rooms of our country, a mention of Muslims flares up emotions. In most cases, they are extreme emotions: it is rather difficult to carry out an intelligent, rationale conversation based on arguments.



Of course, the polity of the nation has become such that things are completely polarised and false notions and data abound.



Recently, when Manmohan Singh talked about the need for affirmative action for Muslims, once again there was a big hoopla.



But do people stop for a moment to think about the Muslims they see around them?



I have two instances of blatant discrimination around my day to day life.



We bought a flat at one of the hot new real estate destinations in NCR, Indirapuram, a couple of years back.

And this was at the most professionally run of all the builders out there at that time. They were telling us about the kind of people who will inhabit the apartment complex: professionals: doctors, senior executives etc.



And here's the part that shocked me:



We are not selling to any Muslims. When they come asking, we tell them we're all sold.



Another one:

We just moved to a new home last month, and were looking for maids. The rates were way higher than at other places. One girl came in, started out asking a rate that was already 20% lower than the others, and looked clean, earnest and honest. But we didn't hire her. Reason? She was a muslim.



We really wanted to. Believe me, we did. But half of our parents and grandparents would probably refuse to visit us, because a Muslim had touched the kitchen. Perhaps they would have been ok if she did not enter the kitchen, but the response would have varied from " Oh my god, a Muslim" to "what's the urgency to hire a muslim? Aisa to h nahin hai ki hindu bai nahin mil rahin? Phir kya jaroorat hai"?



What is a muslim to do in the face of such discrimination? Don't they deserve some help and push from the people who can?

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Saw Crash recently. It was mesmerising. Every scene was a revelation. It captures a couple of days from the lives of a few people living in Los Angeles. The main characters are from different parts of the world: white americans, black americans, first generation arab immigrants, second generation arab immigrants, mexicans...



And mixes them all up: throws them together. They meet at various times, in varying contexts, with varying results. World view changing results. Your view of racism and race relations goes all topsy turvy. You learn of the complexities involved in the social lives of a multi-ethnic society. Real nuances, real detail.



At first, a lot of the characters seem to be from your regular movie, caricatures: the racist white policeman, the young black thug,... And then the twists start. The racist policeman is not. And the white anti-racist partner is.

Couples coping with their different ethnicities and what it means to the world. Racism is multi layered and not unidirectional. Layers get peeled, and new insights emerge.



There are some incredible turn of events, but they are all completely believable. And they all open new lines of thoughts.



Bottomline: 5 stars. Must watch. And tell me what you thought about it.

The office had a day long powercut today. They were testing the floodlights in the Mohali Cricket Stadium, in preparation for the Champions Trophy. And Mohali doesn't have enough power for both the city and the stadium, apparently. So we ran through hoops trying to keep our service up for customers, while the lights shown on the already bright grass.

If that's the situation in day time in test, what will it be like when the lights are on at night during a match? Chirag Taley Andhera? People all over the world watch the match, but someone with a home across the road can't?

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Animesh » Blog Archive » Who is your employee?
Animesh has an interesting post on it. I've added my thoughts here:

I think the family model is very well suited to a startup, mostly
because it is almost a necessity: in a startup, the boundary lines
between work and home and not well defined. In my experience, it is
true even if not all employees are white collar workers.

But keeping the same model as the company evolves into a bigger
organisation is probably not suitable and not feasible. You *want*
people to clearly delineate their professional and personal lives for a
better balance. And the returns to all stakeholders from the family
model become much lower.

Treating employees as customers is definitely the way to go. To me,
there is no other option. At least for the support functions, it should
be obvious that the rest of the organisation is their customers,
because, well, what else are they supporting?

Unfortunately, at least in India, that is often not the case.
Support functions often run as their own fiefdoms, and I think that
often goes on because the executive team doesn’t pay much attention to
them. I think the way to resolve this is to measure performance based
on customer feedback, as for the ‘core’ function. (But that’s
digressing…)

We did some bits and pieces automation on one of our projects over the last few months. It impressed some managers at our customer, who then asked to start a separate project to do end-to-end automation.
We just finished the first iteration. Now, once you have stuff set-up and configured, the following things happen every night:

• the application is built and packaged.
• The install elements: war, database dump, sql scripts, install instructions, release notes get copied to a release folder. The release is named by the timestamp.
• The application is installed and configured on a remote machine.
• The application is started on the remote machine.
• Some automated code review tools are run, and reports generated in a nice consolidated format.
• Junit tests are run on the deployed application, and code coverage reports are generated.
  

So, the next morning, when the team comes in, they know if some things broke. They can also spend 15 minutes running through the code review reports and test the application for sanity.

If a formal release needs to be made, that is also a single command : you just specify the tag name, and all of the above happens. In addition, source also gets tagged.

What's next: integrating canoo web test or some other similar tool with the deployed application, so that the nightly build can also do the sanity tests.

Finally, we are getting close to becoming the cool dudes of automation!

Just read the cover story of Business World of 6th Feb. They have rated the top 25 places to work at in India. Across industry sectors. Here are some excerpts I found interesting ( in that I've been trying to get some of these through at my workplace.) Here's some validation that these things do happen in India.

Many of the organisations in our list have unlimited sick leave, no attendance recording system and self-supervision as the norm.

True collaboration goes beyond employees setting the menu for the canteen… It requires an ability to share 'real power', as is reflected in RMSI's decision to empower employees to calculate their own performance bonuses.

Sasken prides itself on its 'single status' policy… All employees, including the co-founder, and eligible for the same travel benefits.

Amex… shares details of the salary ranges, how these were evolved and what comparator companies were used to determine them.

There is a direct relation between great places to work and superior financial performance…. During the period 1998-2002, an annually updated index of Fortune's 100 best companies to work for would have yielded a return of 9.86%, compared to -0.56% from the S&P 500.

(This one, of course, is US data)

At RMSI, when negotiating with those who leave, managers are forbidden from offering higher salaries as an incentive to stay back. At best, they can offer a different assignment or more responsibilities.

At JW Mariott, revenue and profit and loss figures are shared with all employees across levels, eve dishwashers.

At Aztec, to engage employees, CEO… sends out regular emails to them that are presonal, inspirational, and at times, even philosophical.

Sapient's senior-most bosses, its two managing directors, do not have their own rooms. Seriously. They do not even have their own cubicles or work stations.

At PSI Data Systems, employees were constantly kept updated of the company's true financial picture, orders that were in the pipeline and stragies that would change the company's performance. ( Even when the company was in the red.)

Really.
What IS it ?
People all over the place keep throwing it at you.

I need two loadrunner resources asap.
The customer wants to see the plan asap.
What's the priority of this task ? "asap".

Well, OK, I know what they really mean. They mean to say that it is urgent and pressing. Maybe I'm just nit picking on language. But indulge my language issue for a bit: ( BTW, I'm no grammar expert)

Start Nit Picking:

As soon as possible. As if anyone ever plans any differently. Have you heard of any plans that use the as late as possible principle? Of course I'll do it asap. That's how I do all my stuff.

End Nit Picking

OK, understood. They mean urgent. But that's still little help. That helps little when planning stuff. If I have 10 things to do on my task list, maybe this will take away 3 of them, the 3 that are just nice to do. But what about the other 7 ? Should I just drop them and spend all my time on this one? Or spend half my time on it? Should I spend more money to get this done?

Well, yes, I can find the real urgency by asking the right questions, but doesn't it help if some are already answered ?

To end, here's a customer who regularly sends us tasks over emails that start with " This is urgent as well as important". :-)

An excellent post on how to investigate these most tricky of bugs: ones that take place once in a while, and you cannot figure out how to reproduce them. Basically for testers, but very useful for developers as well.

A few days back, in an internal management forum, we were talking about the increasing attrition and importance of retaining people. One of the PMs talked about how a few people in his team asked him " Why should we stay?"

That's really it. That's what we need to answer. If we don't have an answer to that (besides the nonsense about it being a challenge, and a fast growing oganisation etc.), then we don't have much of a chance.

What are the reasons for people to stay? Or, what do people look for? Here's the regular list:

• Compensation: includes salary and stock options
  
• Quality of work
  
• Role
• Quality of life ( relates to work life balance and the city you work in)
• Brand
  

Let's consider a small services organisation that does not have the best pay scales, does not have much to offer in terms of work content, and where teams often come under schedule pressure. Is obviously not a recognized brand, and is located in Chandigarh ( Great quality of life, but not very relevant to most of the target employee group.)

What does such a company do ? Does it have no hope?

I think it does. It can do one thing that is relatively easy for a small organisation to do, and which can potentially make a big impact on employees, (although probably none on prospective employees.)

Try and be the best place to work at.

That's it. Everything else pretty much follows. I think one can start by putting together a few guiding principles. Use them to check each action and policy: if they don't fit into the principles, then they are acceptable. Here are some that I believe would be good ones:

1. The small guy always wins: Whenever a decision can go both ways, err on the side of the employee. When creating a policy, use one that leans towards the employee.
2. Believe in people: Create policies based around faith in people. Assume that people are honest. In most cases, they are, and the few dishonest instances will be far outweighed by the benefits of faith. For instance, don't count leaves from attendance on a daily level: just inform the manager on a monthly level, and let the manager take a call. If an employee asks for the ability to make business calls from home, accept that she needs it.
   
3. Be pound wise, penny foolish: Don't bother with small expenses. A 200% hike in a shoelace price means nothing compared to a 1% hike in the shoe price. Don't put a tight control on RAM purchases while not controlling PC purchases.
4. Don't always be an accountant: Not everything needs to fit exactly. If a team party budget is Rs. 300 per person per quarter, it is OK for it to go above 300 once in a while: it will balance out on the whole. (Other projects will use less. If everyone is using more, perhaps the budget needs to be increased.) If a little above 300 is not OK, people will ensure they never let it be a little below 300 either: they will use all of it!
5. Communicate: Provide people information. Where are we, where are we going, how are we doing. Perhaps revenue and profit numbers. Definitely new accounts, new initiatives. Have executive management address people once in a quarter, send out mails regularly. Ask for feedback. Act on feedback. Keeping people informed encourages the belief that they matter.
6. Empower: Involve people in decisions. Allow them to suggest and take ideas to completion. For a small company, having entrepreneurial employees is essential. You will keep them only if you empower them.
   
7. Be open: Believe in transparency. If you have a cost constraint, admit it. Share with people the logic of decisions.
8. What others do is not important: Don't look at what other companies are doing: that will at best make you the average. Do what fits in with your guiding principles. If you must compare, compare with the employers that top the employee satisfaction charts!
   

Obviously, I'm not talking about motorcycles or cars :-)

I was having a chat last week about setting up a new office, and I was asked if a software services firm could go from 0 to 100 in 2 months in Chandigarh. I said no, and that 4 months was possible, adding that it might be possible in Delhi.

This was all on a hunch. Later, I started thinking about what would it take. Let's see. First, let's start on the less ambitious goal of making 100 offers in 2 months. I'll make the following assumptions:

• We pay at the 60th percentile
  
• We do at most 2 rounds of tech interviews, and most people who get to the 2nd round are selected.
• We work only weekdays.
• 1 in 5 candidates who get to round 1 get selected.
• 1 in 5 candidates the recruiters talk to get to round 1.
• 1 in 5 resumes recruiters look at are called up.
  

Here are some numbers:

• 100 offers in 2 months mean 2.5 offers a day.
• 2.5 offers a day = 3+ 2.5*5 = 16 interviews a day = 80 screenings a day
• 16 interviews daily mean at least 7 interviewers
• 80 screenings mean at least 7 recruiters
• In all, over 2 months, talking to 3200 candidates, and sourcing 16000 resumes!
  

If the recruiters can generate this sort of number, it doesn't look so bad.

Now let's see how this converts to offers accepted and joinings.

• Not more than two thirds of the people you make an offer to will join. This includes people who reject the offer and people who accept but do not turn up.
• To end up with a pipeline of 100 joinings, you need to therefore do about half as many interviews more than you needed to for 100 offers.
• That takes the total interviewers to 11, and recruiters to 11 as well.

If you're starting from zero, it gets worse, because it takes a while to recruit your interviewers! But let's say you already have 100 employees. It would be a scramble, but you just might be able to make 11 interviewers out of them.

Take the target to 4 months, and things start to look a little easier: you need only 6 interviewers and recruiters, with the time lag also providing bandwidth to do other stuff, like running the business, training people, building the brand, etc.

Do the numbers sound feasible ?

I've been looking around to buy some life insurance: about time one thought of financial security for the family....

Here's what I need: insuring my family and perhaps me against loss of income. That includes any event that impacts my earning in my profession.

As I'm doing my research, I found some interesting points:

• There is a huge variation in premiums between companies. For a 25 year term, 20 lakhs coverage at 30 years of age, it varies from Rs. 6000 to 12000! In this kind of business, why would anyone go for the higher premium? All companies are well established, and all have similar contracts. When asked this question, the costlier ones have little to say except the vague 'our service is better'. That means nothing: anyone can claim that!
• The concept of disability insurance does not exist. When asked about that, people offer the ADD (accidental death and dismemberment), which hardly covers disability.
• Riders: Generally, they offer three: ADD, critical illness, and WOP-(withdrawl of premium, I think). I don't quite understand any of them.
• ADD: In this case, you get double the face amount in case you die in an accident. If the idea is to cover death which comes without warning, it probably makes sense. But I think they don't cover all such cases, for instance, terror attack or natural calamity. If that's the case, what's the point of buying a higher cover for accidental death?
  
• ADD: Moreover, why not allow me the option of buying dismemberment insurance without being forced to buy accidental death as well?
• critical illness: This one seems to have wandered into the wrong business. They pay out the cover if you suffer with a list of pre-defined illnesses. This includes non-systemic ones such as heart attack. You might not have lost your income. This sounds totally like a health insurance product! Actually, not even that - they are not covering treatment expenses: just paying out the cover!
• WOP: Ensure that your cover remains if you stop paying premium. Now why would anyone need this? The only situation where you will stop paying premium is if your income stops. And if your income stops, life insurance is meaningless to you!
• It is extremely difficult to get insurance agents to understand that I'm only interested in risk cover: they keep throwing investment cum insurance policies at you! Some even insist that in their plan, risk cover is 'free'!!! A lot claim that in a given investment plan, I would get minimum 10-12% returns. And the way they say it, one would reasonably assume that it is guaranteed return, and that's what they want you to assume. But mention that word, and the truth comes out.

All of these suggest to me that the insurance business in India has a lot of growing up to do - it is still very early days.

And I'm going to have to live with the risk of a long term disability...