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.