Come in, we are open!

Seventeen years ago, I stepped into my first corporate experience as a Business Analyst associated to Staff Operations of Mindtree in Bangalore. After the initial induction, I found myself seated among the elite company of Staffing, HR and Finance teams. Mindtree was already a known brand by then in the Indian IT industry for being a people friendly organization. Having said that I was in for many surprises as Mindtree did break a few cliches associated with typical corporates.

Right next to where the HR head sat, there was a table like what was used by most of the manager’s in Mindtree where you could walk in and talk to the occupant anytime. This one was busy most of the times and the person who occupied the desk made the conversations quite lively.

I was not sure who that dynamic person was and the curious cat in me wouldn’t sleep longer. I promptly asked my boss who he was. I was stunned, will be an understatement, with the answer he gave me. He was none other than Partha, one of the co-founders of Mindtree. All the management jargons, the corporate biographies I read and every other theory that spoke of the typical ways of working of a company took a bow at that moment. It was indeed a moment of awakening. It was a tremendous realization that these founders are indeed human beings, and you could talk to them without an appointment!

That day taught me a big lesson. Not everything about a corporate culture can be understood in the induction classes. Quite a few facts about an organization will be revealed to you in due course and that could even hold a few surprises for you, some pleasant and others not so.

The culture that was displayed by the executive management of Mindtree was truly one which screamed openness. None of the senior management had to announce this every now and then. They lived and worked with this mindset. You were free to walk in anytime to anyone’s desk irrespective of their designation and ask anything professional that you have in your mind. There won’t be any judgements or reservations about your questions, ever!

It really should be an alarm bell for the senior management of any organization when your staff does not feel comfortable raising questions. It displays a culture of scepticism and lack of trust in the management. Any staff meeting that ends up with a Q&A session which is not utilized must be a cause of concern for a good leader. If you end up ignoring these signals, rest assured, the organization you head will soon experience a derailment. Hence watch out for these signals and correct your course of action.

If you are heading an organization or a department and next time you call for a staff meeting, watch out for the Q&A session. If your people do not raise enough questions, do understand that you are in for trouble, sooner or later. It is also imperative you identify genuine questions vs tick-in-the-box questions. You should welcome the former with both hands and deal with the latter with the kind of respect it deserves including diplomatically discarding if required.

Management is an art, a science and many more. It isn’t something you learn only by reading a bunch of books or doing a Masters from an outstanding university. It is something you need to approach with the warmth of a heart that beats and the swiftness of a brain that pulsates so that you know your people and give them what they need the way they understand.

Here is a toast to all the ‘real’ great managers we know around the world!

Agile & Harry Potter

What has Agile got to do with Harry Potter unless of course we are talking about how agile he is when he flies The Firebolt, the broomstick? That’s probably a discussion for another day. Let us now talk about Agile, the ways of working involving delivering value to business through Features, Epics and Stories.

Our Agile ways of working started predominantly during the work-from-home era due to pandemic. Since then, my kids have been exposed to quite a lot of Agile terminology. Two days back I was referring to User Stories in a conversation and Ryan, my ten-year-old promptly asked, ‘Appa, what are these Stories you are talking about. Is this something which you keep writing and publishing?’.

Now, how do you make a ten-year-old kid understand Scrum practices and Agile concepts such as breaking down of boulders, stones and pebbles. While kids these days are smarter than most adults, I still wanted to give an easier explanation. That’s when I noticed my son holding Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the series. A sudden spell came to my mind!

‘Here you go’, I said. ‘Imagine you have finished reading a chapter in this book. That is equivalent to a Story, the smallest piece of work that can be taken up and completed. Once you finish all the chapters in the book, that’s when you can say you are done with an Epic. When you finish all seven books in the Harry Potter series, you have completed a Feature. The catch is you do all these within a defined timeline which we call cadence.’

He seemed to be quite under my spell and I wasn’t finished yet!

I said, ‘Ryan, these Harry Potter books belong to your library which has quite a lot of other books as well. If you finish reading all of them, you have successfully delivered an Initiative, the topmost item in the Agile delivery chain which gets created based on the demand from your business unit’.

His face was beaming and I was quite convinced that I have simplified a complex model of Software Engineering as much as possible for my son. It was nothing short of magic! At least that’s what I thought till the time I heard another tiny voice from behind asking a question. It was Mia, Ryan’s younger sister.

‘But Appa’, she countered saying, ‘Amma had clearly told brother not to spend too much time with his story books. He needs to focus on his studies.’

I couldn’t help but smile, not just because of the seriousness of the argument, but being presented with an excellent opportunity to help them understand Agile better.

‘Yes darling, that is right, and it also is one of the most important principles of Agile which we call as prioritization. This is how you determine which piece of work is more important than the others. Just like studying well gives you good marks, reading other books gives you knowledge. This is the value that you deliver for yourself, just like how the User Stories deliver value to Appa’s business unit.’

I now have two budding Product Managers who are Agile ready, well almost!

Anatomy of Autonomy

It was the best hospital in the entire state run by a group of efficient, dedicated and extremely knowledgeable doctors. Dr Anatomy, Tommy as he was known, was the most admired among the lot. Years of practice and hundreds of critical and successful surgeries up his sleeve, Dr Tommy was revered by not just the medical team in the hospital, but by doctors’ fraternity across the state.

Dr Tommy led a group of proficient medical team, each one of them being the best in their respective fields. The anaesthetist, the surgical assistants, the nurses, and everyone else were simply the best. They all knew exactly what they were required to do and absolutely followed every instruction from Dr Tommy which ensured a hundred percent success rate for the team.

It didn’t stop there. Dr Tommy ensured that he gave enough room to learn to all his interns and assistants. They were trained so well that when an opportunity presented itself, they were allowed to perform surgeries independently with only a supervision from him. The story went on to the extent that most of the well-known surgeons across the state once worked with Dr Tommy. His legacy lived on.

One day everything changed. Dr Tommy had to pack his bags and move on. He was replaced by Dr Autonomy, Nommy as he came to be known later.

Dr Nommy was given a briefing of how the hospital functioned and especially the high-performance team. After learning everything, he introduced a new way of working for the hospital. He was a true believer in teams being autonomous. Hence, he suggested that they eliminate the concept of a team leader. Everyone was equal and played equally important roles.

He also brought in a dramatic change in terms of skills. Dr Nommy didn’t believe in specialists, instead he wanted the anaesthetist to assist in surgery, the interns to perform anaesthesia and the nurses even could handle a scalpel if need arises. Cross skilling was the order of the new world. What was even more clear was the fact that no one in the new team knew what exactly they were expected to do and when.

Surgeries continued to be performed, patients as earlier got admitted for surgery but unlike in the past, many of them didn’t leave the hospital by their own. They were all carried out in decorated caskets as the new team slowly but steadily helped the hospital to be in the record books for the greatest number of failed surgeries leading to partial or full loss of precious human lives!

The last update was that Dr Nommy lost his job and the hospital is searching desperately for Dr Tommy to bring him back.

Disclaimer: If this story has any resemblance to how agile ways of working was implemented in your organization, it is quite incidental.

My First Corporate Lesson

Two days ago, LinkedIn woke up along with me announcing a dear friend celebrating 16 years with Mindtree, my previous organization. It was quite a moment and obviously I sent him a congratulations note. A few minutes later it dawned on me that it was the same guy with whom I joined Mindtree 16 years back!

Fresh out of college, I had stepped into the lovely Global Village campus of Mindtree in the then Bangalore, with dreams as high as Everest and a resolve as deep rooted as the Pacific. Equipped with a Masters in Management, I couldn’t have asked for a better start than to analyse the Staff Operations of a budding company. Mindtree had spread its wings globally and was getting ready for an even major expansion.

Soon enough I learned that Staff Operations in Mindtree was working in a manner where you had multiple teams managing various geographies. All these teams where co-ordinated by a Central Operations team which at that time was a team of two, my boss and me. Among the plethora of activities, a major task was to get an update on staff engagement from each of the geographies every Monday and consolidate them to present a utilization report on Tuesdays.

This was a time when automation of operations was still on the cards and hence this consolidation was quite a time consuming process. I was tasked to follow-up with all the geography heads and ensure that all the required inputs were available by end of day Monday. By noon Tuesday all the analysis were to be completed and report was to be released.

It was a heavy number crunching exercise on an extremely complex Excel worksheet laden with macros and formulas. Having said that, the direction from my boss was quite clear. Rain or shine, the report must hit the mailbox of all recipients by Tuesday twelve o’ clock. Late by a minute, I’ll be dead!

It wasn’t an exaggeration, as I realized with horror on the first week itself that the mail was addressed to the Chairman of the company himself and copied to all senior managers. As soon as I figured this out, I had a weird sensation of equally feeling elevated in my stature while at the same time being pulled down with fear. What if something goes wrong? I didn’t even want to think of a day when the mail was received late by the leaders of the organization due to a delay from my end directly affecting critical decisions taken in the company.

Initially though the mail was sent by my boss, as days passed, he let me sent it from my mailbox itself. It further brought a huge load of confidence in me. I remember having a glow on face especially on Tuesdays with the sheer thought that the Chairman of the company along with the who’s who of the organization were awaiting the most important mail of the week from me!

The feeling of empowerment was reaching its pinnacle when one day it happened. One of the geo heads, who was a recipient of these mails came over to meet my boss on a Tuesday afternoon soon after the report was released. I was sitting next to him and heard them talk about Utilization Report. I was beaming with pride and was expecting him to praise our small team on how much value do we bring to the organization. Instead he said, ‘It is absolutely rubbish a report and it directly goes into my trash!’

Speechless would be an understatement and what made it worse was when I got to know that his view was subscribed by a few other managers as well. My motivation levels took a major hit. My boss noticed the change, but said nothing. The week went by without any other incident. Next Tuesday came and the Utilization Report went out as usual. A couple of hours later my boss showed me a mail. It was a mail asking for a few additional information on what was reported and the response went back promptly. It was from none other than the Chairman himself!

That’s when my boss spoke for the first time about the incident the other day. He said, ‘Quality, not quantity matters’.

Business Case - The Weakest Link

Alex had a pretty long day and by the time he left office it was close to dinner time. He was quite famished, obviously. He headed to the nearest restaurant where he was absolutely certain of being served with best of the cuisines. He made himself comfortable at a table and took a good look at the menu. Since he had been there earlier it didn’t take much time for Alex to place the order.

The restaurant was quite well known for its chef who was famous for his world class dishes. He was fully supported with an excellent team who were capable of satisfying palates across the world.

While Alex waited patiently, the chef got down to create his magic. Needless to say he did an excellent job in coming up with a masterpiece! The dish was ready to be served.

As Alex almost reached the threshold of his patience, the kitchen doors opened. Through them came out a man in rags, holding a worn out platter on his left hand on which the signature dish was placed. He carried a soiled piece of cloth on his right hand and headed directly to Alex in the most untidy manner. He then placed the dish right in front of Alex along with a set of cutlery that someone used before!

I believe it is pointless to say what happened to Alex’s hunger!

While the above snippet is a work of fiction, this is absolutely true when it comes to Business Cases to plan the right technology solutions.

An operational business unit would have come up with a fantastic proposal for a new change. They might have all valid reasons for coming up with the change and how it was going to help them run their business better. Their hunger for this change was akin to Alex. They placed this need promptly in front of a project team who reaches out to their IT counterpart for a solution.

It is the turn of the ‘chefs’ at IT do their bit of magic. Whether it is an in-house application or a vendor product, together, the team comes up with a fantastic solution for the business problem. Quite a few rounds of discussions result in a presentable estimate.

The ‘dish’ aka solution is ready to be served.

Enter the team of people who consider themselves to be the specialists in Business Case. Their sole purpose of existence is to get the end users come up with a justification of why the change is required. Subsequently present this with all facts and figures so that approvals can be secured for timely implementation.

This is when the ‘man in rags’ comes to light. If the Business Case is not backed up with sufficient facts and numbers, then it’ll never stack up. An absolutely important business change backed with a state-of-the-art solution will all go down the drains if a meticulously drafted Business Case is not placed on the table of decision makers.

This weakest link many a times is a life changer for many. Initiatives could get approved or rejected based on the strength of Business Case. Careers could get redesigned. Professional paths could get forced to take a diversion.

It all boils down to how much someone is willing to put their heart and soul into the act of getting a Business Case which is a sales pitch converted into a confirmed order. Till the time teams do not realize this, we’ll continue to have Business Cases that are akin to still born babies!

Seeing the beyond!

We were in Bangalore at the beginning of second decade of the millennium. The city was probably breathing its last few days as one of the coolest and greenest cities in India enjoying the title of IT capital of the country. Those were the days before the length and breadth of Bangalore underwent multiple surgeries to accommodate metro transport service. It was when staying and commuting in Bangalore was not as horrendous as what is experienced today. A haven indeed it was and working there felt like you were on a year-long vacation with an envious weather a few other cities in India could boast of.  

It was around that time, Ruby and I decided to buy our first car. Since we were a single income household with minimal savings, we decided to go for one of the best small cars then, a Hyundai i10, a hatchback. Those were the times when the CEO of my company, was commuting in a Toyota Corolla which was considered a premium segment car. 

As destiny would have its way, even before we could proceed with booking of the car, life took a different turn. After a few rounds of gruelling interviews, I landed in Dubai as a consultant for Emirates, one of the best-known brands in aviation. Shortly we also got the good news that we were to enjoy parenthood. This and many other factors required us to buy a car in Dubai.

I must say we were quite blessed to have a few friends in Dubai who took the pain to show us around some of the car showrooms so that we could take a decision. Dubai as you may know is a paradise for automobiles. Every possible brand ever made in this world finds itself a home in various showrooms in Dubai. We also observed that options for small cars like the one we were thinking in India were quite limited. Instead, sedans and SUVs were having a competition on Dubai roads about who is predominant. It is not an exaggeration if I said SUVs do have an upper hand in this city.

We weighed all our options. The distance between a Hyundai i10 and an SUV was alarming, both financially and emotionally. Truly speaking, we were not mentally ready for a shift from a hatchback to even a sedan, forget about the SUVs, which was a league altogether different. At least this is what we thought then. 

Since the options for hatchback were quite limited and considering the safety implications we finally zeroed in on a sedan, the one that made us equivalent to the CEO of my previous organization, at least in terms of transportation. Yes, we did buy a Toyota Corolla finally!

If you happen to visit Dubai, one of the first things, you will realize is, sedans like Corolla are nowhere near the boundaries of luxury in this city. This is a place where luxury gets redefined almost every day. A Corolla will probably make its cut as a mid-segment car among the sedans. Though this is the fact related to the status of the car we bought in Dubai, the news was probably not how it was perceived by a few folks. For them we made a jump from not having a car in Bangalore to driving a car that is driven by some CEOs of companies in India. A life of luxury indeed!

This story is not really an exception to the norm. In fact, each one of us need to ask the question, are we really the proverbial frog in the well when it comes to perceptions? Can we see the beyond by expanding our understanding of this world? We all tend to compare ourselves to those who seem to be living in perceived luxury. While this indeed is a human nature, we need to remind ourselves that a constant approach such as this will only ignite the inferior personality among us. We’ll end up feeling depressed and worst case is even becoming hostile in our attitude to others.

On the contrary, learn to appreciate the goodness in our life. Live in the present and appreciate what you have been blessed with than looking up to your never ending wants and feel sad about it.

Keep repeating yourself this mantra: Life is finite, enjoy every beautiful moment you have now!

Tunnel Riders

Alex and Nisha were at their parents’ place after a long gap of two years since Covid-19 pandemic ripped the world apart. There were many relatives they had to visit and decided to call on one of their uncles. It was a good feeling to catch up after a long time and all of them were quite happy to see each other after what was probably the worst two years in their entire life till date.

Among the conversation, a topic came up about a friend of Alex who works in Shimla, one of the most beautiful mountain regions towards North East of India. He had invited Alex many times to come over to Shimla and appreciate the magnificent mountains. Alex and Nisha discussed the plans with uncle and aunt to take a flight to Delhi and later a short flight to Shimla from there. That’s when uncle intervened and suggested a better option.

Alex’s uncle had done extensive trips pan India and was quite familiar with the geography across this gorgeous nation. He suggested taking a train from Delhi to Shimla as there were more than a hundred tunnels across the picturesque Himalayas. As soon as they heard this, both Alex and Nisha got quite excited and almost immediately started picturing the awesome trip through the mountains and valleys on a meter gauge train.

While Alex, Nisha and their uncle were soaking themselves in the lovely landscapes in their minds, their aunt who was listening to all the conversation spoke for the first time. She said, ‘What is the big deal in going through so many tunnels. It will be all dark and gloomy’.

The expression on the faces of other three souls present in the room could only be described with one word, ‘priceless’!

The above story is only a cross section of what we see in our daily lives. There are numerous such ‘aunts’ among us, be it in our family or among friends. These poor souls can almost never see the light at the end of the tunnel. Their minds are perennially stuck in the pitch darkness of the tunnels they cross during their lives.

People like these are always lost in the gloominess and in fact miss to appreciate the beauty as the train of life exits the tunnel into the wilderness and the heavenly panorama of lush green mountains and valleys. Instead they only see the train moving from one tunnel to the next and around them they will befriend only darkness and despair.

It indeed is a mindset. We may think that the worst pandemic in the recent history of mankind might have changed people. Even the most negative of people around us who survived the pandemic might have developed an appreciation towards life. Then again, experiences like this promptly corrects us by citing fantastic examples of perpetually negative human beings. These are personalities who could never think of anything positive in life.

Rain or shine, these people live and breathe negative. Imagine you successfully wrap up an extremely strenuous event for which you prepared relentlessly for a month. Everything went well and while you are beaming with joy, one of the above kind will come to you and cite the least of the imperfection and highlight it as the worst thing to have happened in the whole world. They will religiously fail to appreciate you or your efforts. This is a mental makeup in its deepest and darkest of shades.

So what do we do about this? Where possible help these individuals realize that they are treading the valleys of misery and in fact there is a highland of happiness that awaits them if they are ready to change a bit. More importantly when it comes to us, we need to be aware of the fact that human mind could be like a sponge where it could absorb all these negativity. Do not let it happen. But in the likelihood of that happening, ensure that you squeeze them out with an overdose of friendly positivity.

I am quite sure we can work together to bring in the much needed positive vibes and make the world a better place to live!