The dreamer's trap...

One of the advantages of being a firm thats not traditionally IT is that we are still distant from the many processes and procedures that have infested many an IT services company. Not to say that such processes are unnecessary (an easily customizable process framework is an absolute necessity) but I strongly believe that if overdone they can be a drag on productivity. When I say overdone, I mean following processess more for the letter than for the spirit. Being not caught in such a trap provides much freedom and scope for creativity so critical in product development. There are no mindblocks to asking the "why" and "why not" questions. Your performance is measured more by how much you contributed in the product gaining new customers, market share and in turn aligned with the company's strategy than being caught up in trivia like typing out an inconsequential document.

At the same time, I found myself caught up in what I thought was a dreamer's trap. Thinking about a new feature that I thought would make sense in the product I was handling, I managed to sell the idea to many a person here and thought I had a clincher. Somehow, whatever I found in analyst reports, market surveys, industry trends tended to support my argument. But then, as many a marketing course will tell you, "Know thy customer". For, beyond all these public digests of analyst reports, press reports, expert comments and analysis, there is a customer whose mindset is far more crucial. I had noticed this while working on a product at Nokia. So as to not repeat the same mistake, though I had a team in full steam into the project, I spoke to a friend of mine, who is an architect and tried to act the salesman, trying to convey the excitement I felt for the feature I thought was a clincher. The reply, the facial expressions and the reactions took me aback.

Diversity they say matters a lot in the thinking process of groups. So true. Though you see that in many a case study at bschool, it has so much more impact in real life. Especially more so when I was as involved as I was with the subject. That involvement is the dreamer's trap. It seems that product conceptualization is tricky business because while you need to be focussed and involved, you also need to be able to step back, exit from the dreamer's shoes and enter the end user's shoes. See if the world in the two sets of shoes are anywhere close. If not, you are in trouble. As easily as said, its a tough thing to do. Which is why talking to people totally unrelated to your profession, but those who can be a potential customer helps at times. Its reality check, to see if your idea is deviating from the practical track.

That conversation with my friend put the first hint of fear in my mind. Will this click? Taking a more patient look at it, I realized that I only needed to step back a little bit and refine the idea to suit my audience. As monica tells chandler, "Know thy audience" ;)

A nostalgic weekend...

It was turning out to be another dreary weekend this saturday afternoon. In the last two years that I was out of chennai, all my friends have either moved out of the city or have been married. Either way, I lost out of the buddies who made up my social life. The ISB alumni junta in chennai is what makes up to some extent. So, here I was on my bike at a traffic signal near my place, on my way to meet a few friends when a guy in front of me on a kinetic honda turned around by chance. He was a class mate of mine from school days. We had last met in 95, my last year at school before engineering. An absolute chance meeting with someone who had been a bum chum pal 9 year back, who I had lost touch with since. While I went on with my career, he had compelted his stints at IIT and IIM and was in chennai after a long time. both of us cancelled whatever we had planned and went to the beach. It was wonderful recollecting those days and looking back at all the fun that school was. Sometimes, you dont realize how much life has changed and how much you have changed unless you sit down and consciously recollect those days. You do seem to know you have changed, but the magnitude hits you only when you have a friend like that with whom you can recollect little incidents still fresh, but somewhere back in your memory. By the time we were tired of talking, it was 10 in the night. We planned some sort of a get together with junta left in chennai on sunday. Though only two more turned up (the rest are still untreaceable or busy), it was the best sunday afternoon I had had in a long long time. Sipping my favorite frappe at coffee day, we went back in the years, recollected such precious memories and laughed like school children again. The feeling of innocence and childlike immaturity was heavenly. We took a walk down the road and decided to see if our school was open. It was. A little chat with the watchman and we were in. The feeling that hit me when I entered the place, afte nearly 9 years is indescribeable. Everything was just the way it was. From the volleyball courts that I spent my mornings playing, to the lounge with the names of all the toppers to the huge tree under which we had spent many a day having lunch together it was simply amazing. If I were a filmaker, I would have blended this scene with a early morning 8 o clock shot, which I can remember so clearly, with me and my friends in those school uniforms, arriving in bicycles. The prayer hall, the classrooms, the lounge, even the washrooms (!!!) were just the same. It was the closest I have gotten to a teleport in time. For the half an hour we spent there, time stopped still, went back into the best memories of my life and somehow, I was floating just like I used to in those carefree days. We have planned a get together the next weekend as well, with more people joining in. I plan to take my digicam. I cant wait.

HR in technology companies

Over the past 5 years in the IT/Telecom industry, I have seen how the HR teams in many companies tend to classify you first according to the years of experience you have... I wonder how valid that is... Invariably, when recruiting candidates, I have found many who make it to higher positions thanks to their years of experience while not necessarily being as hard working or passionate as some of their younger counterparts... While it is true to some extent that the years of experience is a good measure of the amount of practical learning that a candidate has gained, is it right to get mired in such a numerical measure with such rigidity when evaluating candidates? I remember one company that visited the campus at ISB which in fact put up a formula for their pay packages in which your educational qualification and years of experience were the only inputs! Half the crowd that attended that ppt wanted to withdraw their applications when they saw such a shocking categorization even before the interview. In the name of process, if you are going to fix the limits of a person's financial incentives like that, how can someone who is really streets ahead be actually groomed to higher positions quickly though the ranks?

In fact, when I was talking to one of my US returned friends the other day, I asked him about the differences in HR policies in the US and India in IT companies. Though this is a very subjective opinion, it was not very dis-similar to what I had heard from many others like him... His opinion was that one, in tech companies, HR in India tends to play a lot more role in recruiting a candidate in the name of following processes, while in the US, all that mattered was one decision by the hiring manager about the absolute suitability of the candidate for the specific position on offer. Maybe this is due to the random hiring in large numbers done by the Indian companies in anticipation of high growth and a need to ramp up quickly. But the second point was more interesting. He said that if one were brilliant in the US, there is usually no policy that prevents you from gaining ascendancy (I am not going into racism and gender here). He was of the opinion that HR generally takes a backseat and is involved only when absolutely necessary. In India in tech companies have set up too many rigid guidelines in the name of processes that allows HR to be first involved and second interfere in every issue related to recruitment process, pay and promotion.

Personally, I have not worked in the US. So I cannot comment. But I can certainly say that I would like to see more HR personnel who have a techie background. HR folks in India are dominated by grads from XLRI, TISS and other such bschools or psychology grads who have never worked in an organization before in any other role. Isnt it crucial that someone in HR has actually been in the shoes of the average employee before graduating to manage employee affairs? Would it not be great if these XL and TISS grads had worked as a techie for a couple of years before moving into an hr role? If the average employee is the customer of HR, then wudnt it be great if, as a HR person, I have been in the shoes of my customer to actually understand what his needs are? In fact, this is more so in the IT industry, which is witnessing high growth, attrition and more and more ambitious employees everyday. Wipro, I heard, actually encourages and in fact has in its HR roles, employees who were software engineers. When I spoke to a senior HR guy from Digital when in ISB, he too felt the same. That a HR person is able to understand and perform better if he has worked in the shoes of an employee in the past. I do not know if the face of HR in the US is different from India because bschool grads in the US, who get recruited into HR teams, have actually worked before bschool, because of which they are more evolved and understanding when they enter an organization. I do not know the proportion of bschool grads among HR folks in the US, but this could possibly be an explanation.

Back from sleep

Well, the past two weeks have been busy or what? Have hardly had any time to think anything other than work... because its suddenly become extremely interesting... Being in a evolving organization that developing a matrix reporting structure is interesting. It all starts with a lot of micromanagement from the incumbents who setup the new facility. From then on, a gradual process starts where employees in the new facility come up to speed with the organization, with a lot of help from visiting expats (in the case of offshore centers). A stage comes in when the offshore center matures, starts delivering and is assigned more work and responsibility. But this is a dicey stage for the incumbents. How easy is it to start giving up responsibility or start offshoring more work, especially if you have not visited the offshore center? So, one tends to starts with a little pilot project to test the waters. Once that works, you begin to offshore more work, often appointing someone to assume responsibility for the delivery from the offshore center. But then, overcoming the mind block and being able to give up control completely to the delivery guy offshore is a challenge for most incumbent managers. It is akin to the ability to be able to delegate a significant potion of work for which you are answerable to your boss, to a new employee, who you know is good, but say, you cannot see working in front of you. Hence, you tend to retain some amount of the control and try to draw a line of power sharing, creating a matrix organization. Being able to draw this line clearly and to the satisfaction and complete knowledge of all involved is a very challenging task. If not done correctly, this can result in a lot of loss of productivity in terms of loss of motivation of the delivery guy offshore due to lack of power in decision making or due to the lack of clarity to the employees offshore in terms of who is in charge and whose commands have to be followed. Being in the middle of evolution of such a line is pretty exciting.

Now that today I have my free time, I was searching regd. social networking and found some interesting stuff, one which I have downloaded and am going to begin to use. Its called huminity (http://www.huminity.com/english/software.html) and what it does is amazingly interesting. Check it out. So is what the new ICQ universe (go to icq.com and click on universe under "Meet people"). The graphics are cool and I am still waiting for an invite into the universe. But then, the larger question of whether you can build a sustainable revenue model around social networking was still there. That was until I found spoke.com. These guys have been smart in addressing their products to a niche segment of the corporate market, the sales guys. Reminds me of my high tech marketing course, and all that talk about the product life cycle and crossing the chasm.