‘Dangal’ Lessons

Here are some things anyone should be aware of on their way to Success, whatever that means for themselves.

Kudos to the Dangal movie team to really put forth an example of different challenges all through the movie…

• To fulfill your dreams — to see them become reality — you may have to live out your entire life, and probably also that of your successors.
  • The whole movie is about this…

• And every moment of your life and theirs needs dedication towards the dreams.
  • The whole movie is about this…

• Except you and maybe a rare few others, everyone else is, intentionally or otherwise, working towards making sure you do not achieve your dream.
  • Examples: the butcher, the neighbours, the cousin, the ‘dangal’ organizers, the coach.

• Losing focus is the easiest thing to do when you have reached halfway to your goals. You’ll find others who are there, seemingly with you, but they may not share your dream.
  • The other wrestlers.

• You will not get an opportunity to showcase your abilities until there’s something in it for someone else. Do not expect people to support and hand over opportunities to you just because you’re passionate about something.
  • The girls get their first opportunity for fighting in the ‘pit’ against the boys because the organizer guesses a “girl vs. boy” wrestling match would be a big crowd-puller… NOT because he wants the “encourage the girls”.

• Only those who swim against the current know how strong the current is.
  • Again, the whole movie is interspersed with examples – being teased over haircuts, facing ridicule…

• And the final and most important lesson: Watching a movie about someone swimming against the current is not the same as swimming against the current.
  • While the movie is entertaining of course, real struggles nowhere feel like being in a movie. Real struggles test our patience, test our will, test our abilities, to the absolute limit… and beyond!

Thinking Through – II

Copyright: KGSS (Google search)

Something related to an old post reared its head up again.

I talked about this topic a little differently earlier in my blog post, Thinking Through.

Some chat at work, daily stand-up meetings and elsewhere brought us to the subject of ‘estimations’. A much-maligned term, it is a usual subject of debate, unmet expectations and some heart-burn. In the usual SCRUM scenario, questions like –

• How valid are the estimates we put out in the SPM?
• When is a good time to revise the estimates?
• Why are estimates usually less than actuals? What if estimates were more than actual?

… and such others, usually are the epicenters of debate. After all, one person’s ‘estimate’ is another person’s ‘commitment’.

And this leads to questions like the following:

• Why do we estimate?
• Why is this a skill?
• If estimation is a skill, how do we claim competence in it?

Before I chew on the above, a general idea put up its interesting hand up in my mind. Yeah, and I stumbled upon it while browsing, after a chat I had with a retired Civil Engineer.

Lawyers cannot practice law without a Certificate of Practice (Sanad).

Civil Engineers cannot practice without a Certificate of Practice.

Doctors cannot set up a clinic without a Practicing Certificate.

Software is already driving cars, running machines. Who qualifies the capabilities of software engineers? Unless you want to certify a product as Safe (SIL Certification or other such Safety-Critical certifications), who should care about the makers following software development best practices?

The Institution of Engineers is the largest multidisciplinary Professional Body of Engineers. It was conferred with The Royal Charter, on 13 August 1935, which mandates as follows: “to grant certificate of competency whether under any Act of the Government of India or Local Governments regulating the conduct and qualifications of Engineers or other wise howsoever”.

Engineering Disciplines in which Certification of Professional Engineers awarded presently are:

Civil Engineering

Electrical Engineering

Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Mining Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Marine Engineering

Environment Engineering

Wonder why is Software Engineering missing here?

Basic Requirements for certification as Professional Engineers:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or equivalent recognized by Statutory Authority or Government of India;
• Experience of 7 years in engineering practice;
• Professional experience of 2 years in a responsible position of significant engineering activity;
• Membership of recognized professional engineering institution/association;
• Maintained continued professional development since graduation at a satisfactory level;
• At least three sponsors, who are either Fellows of IEI/Fellows of any other recognized professional engineering institutions, must support any application for PE.
• Passed the Assessment Examination as prescribed.

So, it is obvious that a certain level of skill in learning, using and applying technology, sharing knowledge so others can learn from your experience is critical to our careers, to the work we put out into the world, and our reputations as professional and skilled craftsmen.

Since the Great Democratization of the Software Industry maybe 30 years ago, we are seeing much more young people taking up Engineering, and it is a challenge to skill people at the necessary levels of competence.

SCRUM or Agile development is a very good way of dealing with this situation. Waterfall model of development is good for skilled people, already having a significant body of experience in their technology and domain, to predict things to be done for a project well in advance, before starting work. For today’s teams, where most of the members are young, domain knowledge isn’t a given, there are multi-disciplinary skill-sets, it is imperative to build things as you go. A curious mind, asking questions and learning quickly and adapting the learning to the situation is a valuable mind!

Of course, how long should things continue such (in the SCRUM way) is another topic altogether. Old-timers are right in their frustration when someone leaving the team carries away the knowledge, and things have to start all over again. “It was better when people didn’t switch jobs so often!” or “We know this takes this long, why reinvent the wheel?”

There are valid reasons to work longer in places. Within 2-3 years, a person just has got a good hand of the product he is working on, he has started understanding the domain, he can now start giving back with this knowledge. Moving to another job at this stage only means you always are in ‘learner mode’. A stable, reliable product cannot be built by halfhearted individuals, always sitting on the fence. Only a person who works longer, can understand the critical code-base of the product, and make intelligent decisions about the changes in the product. Then is it a surprise, that the core development teams in any product company are invariably highly paid?

Another common example I like to talk about is this. Civil engineers don’t build a bridge, pass an increasing amount of trucks over it, wait for it to break and say, “Hah! Let’s make it stronger than before!” There are well understood principles of construction, materials are researched, and then accepted for use.

Software Industry still is in it’s nascent stage, and the demand for skilled people is exploding. Technology, and software, is taking up its place not just in items of convenience, but replacing some decision-making. How this software is written is becoming more and more critical. Just as engineers have accountability for designing bridges that sustain storms, earthquakes, software engineers have more and more accountability in designing reliable systems. A professional mindset starts with thinking about problems, evaluating solutions, anticipating user scenarios, and developing skills that match and exceed the problem state.

SCRUM forces us to break down problems in manageable chunks, predict things for shorter durations, and practice and tune the ‘thinking ahead’ mindset. To develop this, how you read, how much of it do you understand, how do you use it and practice it, becomes important. Scott Young also put out a variant of the same thought recently in his post: How Much Do You Really Understand?

While there is certainly merit in doing things, making mistakes and learning from them, I am quite sure that spending some time thinking of things before-hand can help in avoiding some of the mistakes that you would eventually end up making. I am reminded of Thomas Edison’s famous quote: “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. “Well, the other genius, Nikola Tesla – who argued against Thomas Edison in the famous War of the Currents – had this to say about him, “If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search… I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.”

Engineering was always about disciplined thinking, disciplined action, regular learning. 

Engineers who understand what is built, how it is built and why it is built that way are those who carry the ability of bringing dreams and visions to life! And in that, it becomes a noble profession!

The Burden of Privilege

This graphic is doing the rounds on WhatsApp.

Quite poignant considering it is salary-revision-time of the year! 😉

And I am reading interesting stories on WhatsApp that some are sharing to compare with how real this scene is in many homes these days. Children are answering back… and how! 🙂

To contrast this, there are the other situations where the parents are genuine high-achievers! Not just in school life, but also later. Some were high-achievers in school and are doing well in their professional lives, and some others have been ‘late bloomers’, but have developed equally or more admirable reputations than the ‘consistent’ performers.

And the children of these high-achievers have their own stories to tell.

There is someone whose parents are successful and reputed doctors, and she is an IIT-ian and has a Ph. D. from among the reputed universities in the U.S.

There is someone whose father has many many patents to his name, and this fellow is an ex-Googler and is a multi-talented person also striking out on his own.

There is someone whose parents are successful and reputed entrepreneurs, and he has struck out on his own and making a name for himself, instead of joining the family business.

There are people whose parents are successful and reputed entrepreneurs, and they have taken up the (un)enviable task of continuing the family business.

All of them have a common story… what it has meant to be the children of successful and reputed parents and how difficult it was for them to just come out of the shadows that their own, personal, giants cast around them.The expectations have always been sky-high… “Look at your parents!“

There isn’t much credit for true achievements (at least from some people)… “You have it in your genes!”

Every success is compared with a corresponding situation in the past… “It’s just history repeating itself!”

And that brings in a sobering thought — even if you want to stand on the shoulders of giants, you have to first climb up to their shoulders.

And they have accepted that challenge! 🙂

~ KalpaK

पाणीपुरी – एक योग!

पाणीपुरी – एक योग! ती खाणे म्हणजे एक योगक्रिया!!

 

Image Source: Google Search

 

आज दुपारी, ऑफिसमधल्या मित्रमंडळींबरोबर जेवताना एक तसा अधूनमधून बोलण्यात येणार विषय परत उभा राहिला. परदेशी असताना ‘आपले’ जेवण कसे मिळवायचे, आणि त्याची उणीव कशी भरून काढायची याचा.

 

आमच्याकडे काही लोक थोडाफार काळ परदेशी राहून आले आहेत. तिकडे आपले बरेच पदार्थ मिळत नाहीत ही तिथे राहणाऱ्यांची एक मोठी खंत असते. त्यात पाणीपुरी मिळत नाही ही तर एक दुःखाची बाब आहे.

 

यावरून ‘पाणीपुरी’ हा विषय सुरु झाला…

 

‘पाणीपुरी’ हा एक वेगळाच आणि संपुर्ण विषय आहे. हा खाद्यप्रकार जितका सोपा, सुटसुटीत तितकाच अंतर्मनात घर करून बसणारा आहे.

 

पाणीपुरी तुम्हाला तृप्त करूच शकत नाही. पोट भरेल पण मन कधीच भरणार नाही. तसा जणू ‘शाप’ मिळाला आहे आपल्याला… एकदम सुखद शाप! पाणीपुरी खायला लागल्यावर, “भैय्या, एक और प्लेट देना!!” हे झालंच पाहिजे. नाही झालं तर तुम्ही पट्टीचे पाणीपुरी-भोक्ते नाहीच! आणि तो भैय्या जितका कळकट्ट आणि मळकट तितकी त्याची पाणीपुरी चवदार!

 

“‘छप्पन भोग’ पैकी किती पाणीपुरीचे?” हा प्रश्न एकदम बरोबर आहे.

 

आपल्या संस्कृतीत कितीतरी महान योगी होऊन गेले. अनामिक या योगींनी आपली संस्कृती जशी घडवली, जसा तिला आकार दिला, आणि आपल्याला एक आजन्म पुरेल असा वारसा दिला, तसाच पाणीपुरीच्या कर्त्याने आपल्याला एक सुखद आणि जिभेचे चोचले पुरवण्याच्या कृतकृत्य भावनेचा वारसा दिला आहे. त्यामुळे पाणीपुरीचा ज्याने शोध लावला, तो एक महान योगीच होता. 

 

पाणीपुरी ‘सुचली’ तो क्षण ऋग्वेद सुचण्याजोगा होता. ऋग्वेद सुचले, पुढे अथर्ववेद, सामवेद आणि यजुर्वेद सुचले… “सुचले” म्हणण्यापेक्षा ते “आले”. तशी पाणीपुरी “आली”. आणि त्यांबरोबर श्रुती आणि स्मृती स्वरूपात पाणीपुरीही आजवर आपल्याकडे पोचली. याबद्दल आपण कितीही कृतज्ञ झालो तरी ते कमीच असेल!!

 

~ कल्पक

The Work/Life Balance and Our Identity

In our culture, we created our own strong communities based around our jobs and the work we did ? we call it the caste system.

Eventually, the caste system arguably “degenerated” to become birth-based rather than ability-based.

But that is not the topic for this post.

The way Indian society has been structured over the decades and centuries, it becomes apparent that people identified strongly with what they did.

It is obvious why someone would choose their work as the primary identifier for themselves. Work is the pragmatic, tangible, perceptible way through which man creates his identity. It is by this way his contribution of value to society is measured. High levels of skill, rare abilities have always commanded respect in society, and also have defined the material benefits a person enjoys.

The caste system is still considered very important today in Indian society although most of us no longer do what our caste represents. So quite funnily and ironically, when we have new kinds of jobs today, we are still identifying ourselves by some outdated “caste” i.e. a job that was done by our ancestors.

A lot of us don’t identify ourselves with our jobs today ? at least it does seem so from the amount of material we see about passion, motivation, uncountable workshops, seminars, that happen on these topics. Our ancestors identified themselves so strongly with their jobs, and I think then they did not have to worry about Work/Life Balance. Their work was their life.

There was less or no conflict ? we can at least infer this absence of conflict considering we see so much attachment people have about their caste. We, however, are in conflict. It could be that our unrealistic and unreasonable expectations from our jobs are the cause of this conflict. Money, authority, making a difference, are only some of reasons of the expectations disparity. Here, it would be interesting to read Ayn Rand’s essay in her book Atlas Shrugged about money. It deals with the disparity in expectations about money.

A pertinent question here is: If we have accepted new jobs, and we need castes to give us a sense of identity and belonging, why can’t we create new castes around these new jobs of ours: Accountants, Bankers, Architects, Singers, Engineers, Doctors, Painters, …?

What is wrong with that?

Why is there a difference between the attitudes of our own ancestors then and ours today? Work then was something to be proudly associated with, and today it is not? Something is seriously wrong.

Edit Feb 18, 2017:
Today I watched this TED Talk by Salman Khan. I think I have the answer to the above “Something is seriously wrong”! It is indeed the disengagement that comes with not having mastered your work in the initial stages.

In the video, Salman Khan talks about a test in an algebra class. “On that test, maybe I get a 75 percent, maybe you get a 90 percent, maybe you get a 95 percent. And even though the test identified gaps in our knowledge, I didn’t know 25 percent of the material. Even the A student, what was the five percent they didn’t know?

Even though we’ve identified the gaps, the whole class will then move on to the next subject, probably a more advanced subject that’s going to build on those gaps. It might be logarithms or negative exponents. And that process continues, and you immediately start to realize how strange this is. I didn’t know 25 percent of the more foundational thing, and now I’m being pushed to the more advanced thing. And this will continue for months, years, all the way until at some point, I might be in an algebra class or trigonometry class and I hit a wall. And it’s not because algebra is fundamentally difficult or because the student isn’t bright. It’s because I’m seeing an equation and they’re dealing with exponents and that 30 percent that I didn’t know is showing up. And then I start to disengage.”

I think this is it! “So the idea of mastery learning is to do the exact opposite [of what we do now i.e. fix the time, constrain the topics you learn in that time]. What’s variable is when and how long a student actually has to work on something, and what’s fixed is that they actually master the material.

Thanks Salman! You rock!

Do you ‘get it’?

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.
~ Steve Jobs

So, now and always, it is worthwhile to understand if we ‘get’ what we are doing.

Throwing money at problems does not solve them.
Throwing your skills, knowledge and experience at problems could solve them.

How many problems in the last days, weeks, months and years did you miss out from solving?
How many problems in the last days, weeks, months and years did you solve after they blew out of proportion?
How many problems in the last days, weeks, months and years have you discussed with relevant people and agreed that they need not be solved right now?

And most importantly…
How many problems in the last days, weeks, months and years did you solve in spite of they not being yours to solve?

Knowing these things matter. By these knowledge and measurements, you measure how you are adding value to what you are doing.

‘Get’ this, and you’ve figured out what they mean by value-addition. Then you become so good, they can’t ignore you.

And once you’ve figured this out, you’ll realize what Aristotle meant when he said – Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.

Schrödinger’s Cat, Rapists, Management Strategy and the Friendzone

You read that right! How could I possibly combine all these in a related, coherent, lucid, logically-connected post? Well… I just did. Read on!

I read about the Schrödinger’s Rapist via a Quora answer, and shared it with friends. Huh! What’s that you say. Read this blog post for more information. Apparently, women just get the concept… I have put a small definition here from the lady author: “When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you — to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy — you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.” (I’ve used without permission, but I hope the link to the post is enough!)

The entire concept is based on Schrödinger’s Cat – as the author explains in the Comments section:

“Essentially the point is that the cat in the box is either alive or dead. We don’t know, because it’s in the box. We can calculate the probability, but until the box is opened, the cat exists in a state of uncertainty. Dead? Alive? Somewhere between the two? Upon meeting a man, we have no information about him other than the general stats. We collect more information as we go, but that information does not erase the uncertainty. It just changes the odds. The only way we know for sure — the only way the box can be opened, as it were — is if the man proves himself a rapist by committing a rape, either against us or against someone else.”

Now, I had some interesting interactions with some friends who don’t just read what I share, but are willing to share their thoughts as well.

One woman friend wrote, “Girls just aren’t taught to stand up for themselves! Why do they cry if someone passes a snide comment?! Just one well-placed reply to such comments is usually enough to shut them up!”

Another friend, who is an HR guy, asked, “Who is Schrödinger?”

And then it started…

Schrödinger’s Cat is a Thought Experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Used in quantum mechanics to evaluate many problems related to theoretical physics. Basically saying that you cannot really predict stuff until a point, but only can see the effects after they’ve happened. For anything to have happened, all we know is its probability. However to see if it has actually happened in reality, we need an observation. So physicists grapple with the thought experiment of when exactly the probability of something happening really becomes observable reality. E = mc^2 was path-breaking because it said matter (having mass m) was actually energy.

So then came the question… when does energy ‘become’ or ‘have’ or ‘get’ massive… as in become ‘with mass’ that we can observe with our tools. All physics and related inventions are about some predictable interactions energy has with our measuring tools… no one knows an atom or anything subatomic. All we have is measurements which themselves are interactions with something observable.

Like HR data.. the moment management wants data, you are never sure of the data because there is an observer in place. What happens in reality is not the same as data. It is called Observer Effect. What would have happened if the observer was not ‘installed’ is anyone’s guess… i.e. Probability. Project data is seldom ‘real’. There is always bias because of fear of repercussions. Great management or Leadership  is about figuring out how they can get information about ground reality without their observation adversely affecting it… Physicists grapple with the same problem. An example for error in measurement due to Observer Effect is thus: To measure the air pressure in a tyre, you have to release some air from the tyre. So, you are not measuring the actual tyre pressure. Observer Effect can be reduced by better techniques of measurement.

For example: Consider a company wants to move its offices from place A (say Magarpatta, Pune) to B (Hinjewadi, Pune) to get advantage of tax benefits due to Tax Holiday zones. “The Balance Sheet will show Green if we move!” the Finance guys say emphatically!!

What will happen if you move? Will the best people in your company, the ones who are the prime drivers of activities, also move? The move by the Company means people who have bought houses near the workplace now have to travel to the diametrically-opposite point of Pune daily. That is about 4 hours of travel daily, instead of the earlier, say, 1.5 hours.

What if they don’t and you still move. They leave. You get replacements but obviously competence may be a problem. You may have customer satisfaction issues until the new people settle in their jobs. You may even lose some customers along with losing the bright minds in your company. And this will not happen overnight after you move. This will be a loss over say 6-18 months after you move. Is the short-term benefit from Tax Holiday worth this long-term problem, potentially affecting your business more drastically, worth it? How is this calculated anyway?

To do some analysis, you need ground data: who are REALLY your best people… the drivers of ideas, the best implementers, etc.? What could happen to them if you move? If management just starts asking questions like these how many people will smell a rat and jump ship? How many people will stay? What does that mean for your projects and business? So, even if you don’t really move, just proposing ideas could set off things you never intended.

How can you have an observer in place who can get data without setting a cat among the pigeons? Any Measurement causes its own Observer Effect. That is the Law of Nature. Schrödinger’s Cat is this: Until you don’t observe, you won’t know. To know you have to observe and then you can’t say if it was your observations that caused the damn thing! Of course it is not a perfect analogy… as analogies by definition aren’t perfect.

Our dear Mr. Stephen Covey would push his book, The Speed of Trust, emphatically in our faces. “Trust will smoothen your way!”, “a very high level of Trust is needed to get ground reality data unbiased to the management so the management could take informed decisions”, “measuring the ‘right’ parameters in projects is critical”, and so on… Trust is the ‘better technique’ for Management to get as real data as possible!

So, my friend in HR understood the point, and should I say Schrödinger can be (somewhat) understood through Management Principles?!! Ha ha ha…

So, as long as we aren’t classified as ‘potential rapists’, we guys are okay with things – he said!! We may become friends and “therapists” for some of our girl friends, and that is much better than “the rapists”. Friendzone preferred!! 😉

~ कल्पक 

After YZ…

I am back home after watching the new Marathi movie, YZ, with friends. Warning! Spoilers follow.

After the movie, we had a chat about the movie protagonist going off alone into the sunset… well to the airport. Apparently he wants to travel the world or something with his new-found self-confidence. He doesn’t get together with either of the two girls who have confessed their love for him, and the third girl who is his childhood friend, already divorced, chooses another guy already in her life over our protagonist.

We were talking about this… why not get together with any of the two girls who fell for him?

We discussed this for some time, and more in-depth discussions were interrupted by preference for shopping by the girls with us.

But like many things that stay in my mind and then are churned over for ideas and thoughts and whatnot, here I am after a longish bike ride home with enough stuff to make a blog post. I have already written a message to my friends on WhatsApp that I am writing this post, and I imagine they are already rolling their eyes!! 🙂

So what we discussed over a McDonald’s burger and fries was this:

Our protagonist, Gajanan, is an awkward 33-year-old. Goofy and of course unsuccessful at all levels with the fairer sex. He ends up in Pune, and it is the story of how his friendship with an 18-year-old called Battees, opens him up to a new world around him and makes him self-confident. The movie is a good watch.

So, now that he has discovered his self, the hidden true version of himself, he doesn’t seem too interested in the two girls who have fallen for him. He meets his childhood friend, recently divorced with a kid. She has a guy who is helping her out and chooses to marry him over Gajanan. So it is definitely not that he is unwilling to get into a commitment after discovering that he can be successful with the ladies with his new YZ attitude.

We talked that the reasons could be that he, having discovered himself, now wants to “try out” his success with more girls and fine tune his skills. But, that is not the way the film is portrayed for Gajanan. Yes, a person who discovers himself could also go on to become a ‘player’ (a la Barney Stinson) and go on a heart-breaking spree. Here is something more and different.

Now he does not have to make an appearance of being something he is not to attract people around him.
He is now a genuine, authentic person, who has chosen to live his life on his own terms.

Once a person becomes ‘ready’, he would definitely want to be successful in all aspects of his life.

• He is now fired up from within.
• Now, he has to make sure his ‘fire’ isn’t doused by people who “aren’t there” yet.
• He would be very careful of the company he keeps.
• He would want to be part of that “tribe” where there are similar fired-up people.
• He would want to see the world more.
• He has lived enough of his years in a shell. No more! He would like to try himself out in different and possibly uncomfortable situations which challenge him.

And in the context of Indian society, his choice of partner would consist of someone fulfilling something like the following:

1. A similarly self-confident person.
2. A person who nice, good, kind, generous, and authentic. Integrity is a big value. A must-have.
3. A person who isn’t afraid of saying No, and of having boundaries.
4. A person who won’t get into a relationship to be an emotional crutch for someone else. Instead, this person would only encourage emotional self-reliance.
5. A person who doesn’t play ‘hard-to-get’ and such games to generate ‘attraction’. Someone who recognizes that people who play these games do not have something genuine within themselves to attract people to themselves… i.e. they have nothing of real value to offer in any relationship.

Of course, this list is not exhaustive.

But definitely NOT caste, money, physical appearances, location, degrees, or other attributes. Just as some people consider these to be fundamental requirements to agree to a matrimonial engagement and are not willing to budge at all… our Gajanan would now not budge from the points mentioned in his preferred list. His criteria is no longer ‘external’. It is about the person themselves. Their values, their outlook towards life, and such. He now knows that this is what creates REAL VALUE, both in personal and professional relationships. He showed that in his History classes. With this, it is only a matter of time before all material success follows him. As ‘3 Idiots’ concluded, “Don’t chase success, chase excellence and success will follow.” Gajanan is now on his way to chase excellence in his internal state – external excellence and therefore success will follow… of course not without any challenges. But now… he is equipped within himself to take on these challenges!

And now, with his self-confidence, he is not desperate for a relationship. Or even physical intimacy for that matter. He won’t be in the relationship just for the social approval, for the PDA and the justification towards social norms. He is an emotionally fulfilled person since he has genuine, in-depth interactions with people around him. He touches people around him – friends and family – and they really WANT him around themselves, not by obligation or favour. But he doesn’t get upset if they don’t. He doesn’t create emotional traps from where he or people can’t get out of without a big dose of drama and guilt.

He will no longer be in relationships based on guilt or pity. He will no longer be in relationships not based on Truth.

And so, with this, I am done on this topic! Waiting for the next topic to come up and become food for thought!!

~ कल्पक

Simplicity and Clarity

Way back in 2007, during the early days of my writing this blog, I thought of writing about Simplicity. It was an idea that has been there on and off in my mind. Suddenly, two happenings this week at work and home have given me the fodder to chew on this idea and really put it out in words.

Simplicity and Clarity go hand-in-hand. They feed and contribute to one another… like in a perfectly symbiotic relationship.

How to go about explaining things to people?

How do we tell people about what we do (or why) in a way they understand?

I’m not talking about persuasion. I’m talking about creating enough clarity that persuasion is not needed at all! I’m talking about turning on that light!!

I had some relatives at home last evening and we talked about what I do. We talked at length, and the situation matched with this event at work. After this event at work, in a short chat with a colleague, I had quipped, “Telling people what is in your head in a way they understand is a very useful skill. Making sure you don’t tell them too much in case they really understand it, is quite another!” 😉 (Work confidentiality reasons, obviously!)

So anyway… here are a few things I came up and as usual, putting my thoughts on my blog feels nice. Here goes.

For someone new to your work or ideas or the-thing-you-want-to-explain… avoid jargon, code names, abbreviations. Keep things simple.

• Explain using analogies. Can you compare your work (or parts of it) with day-to-day things – by clearly identifying similarities and removing things that do not match in the analogy you are using? Because analogies, by definition, are not perfect.
• Provide insight to the audience. Can you provide ‘ah ha!’ moments to your audience?
• Can you, very easily, put the gist or the core idea in front of your audience? What problem are you really trying to solve?

Of course, this means you yourself have to have good fundamental understanding of your work.

That is why, in today’s world, the Ability to Explain Things Easily is perhaps the TOP SKILL you can have. ABOVE EVERYTHING ELSE.

And to do this… words have to be your friends. In the pursuit of Science and Mathematics scores, ignore language skills to your own disadvantage!!

Even Swami Vivekananda knew it and told it to us long ago – it has always been us who weren’t listening: Words (spoken or written) should clarify ideas, rather than demonstrating the speaker’s (or writer’s) knowledge. If all you intend to do in a conversation is show off your knowledge (however well-meaning you may be), very soon you will be ignored.

At face value, the line below (from a book/movie Dead Poets’ Society) seems to be suggesting that one starts to use difficult words in normal conversation… but to take that meaning only would be a big mistake! It begs us to learn to use the right words, and in this endeavor, laziness will not do!!

Image Courtesy: Google Search. I do not put any claim on copyright of this image or its contents.

And it is not while writing documents, in presentations, in meetings, in design discussions, or such that you need to use this skill. IT IS A HABIT… USE IT ALL THE TIME.

Yes, it is tiring… which is why it is fun! And when eyes light up with understanding, it blows away all exhaustion. 🙂

Cheers!

_KalpaK

Ideas versus Execution: An Annoying Debate

This debate is really annoying.

I happened to read Derek Sivers’ VERY popular opinion recently… and it did engage me – for a while. This is a very compelling argument.

Image courtesy: Google search.

Then I read some more… and the prevalent opinion is indeed something of the sort, “Ideas are a dime a dozen, Execution is everything.”

Just Google ‘ideas versus execution’ and you’ll find tons of articles that debate this left and right.

And I asked myself a simple question: If execution is so crucial, what makes a great execution different from a bad/mediocre one?

And I didn’t really have to think at all. The answer is again, Ideas!

Execution is just MORE ideas!!

• simplify the UI by making getting rid of these unwanted controls,
• clean the interface,
• use this to speed things up,
• if we do things this way it will cost us less,
• this is not what they are doing so let us do it,
• let us finish this tonight instead of tomorrow,
• get rid of those button clicks they aren’t necessary,
• let’s use bright simple colours,
• use python instead,
• add these functionalities but not all at once,
• no ads!
• let’s make an app for this!

Execution therefore is just made up of ideas from your expertise, ideas from customers, ideas from your competition, ideas about how it could be done.

So mediocre or bad execution is really being so carried away by the primary (seed) idea that you ignore the ideas that really would bring that concept to reality in a better way. Great execution is made up of ideas that are actually your choices about the manifestation of the details of your primary idea in ways no one has thought of yet – or with really good insight into the way of doing things.

What can you expect to hear from someone who has to eventually be judged on the not-so-good execution?

“We had no idea how it could be made better.”
“If we had that idea then, we would have done things differently.”

“Oh they really simplified things well, we didn’t think of that.”
“Ah! We had thought about the same thing, but we rejected that idea!”

Execution is still Ideas… competence in using the selected tools of execution allows for more ideas to be tried out and used by the ‘executioners’. They simply have more ideas at their disposal.

Ideas are all there is. Ideas alone can change the world.