At the Intersection

It is a perfect 32 degrees.  A light and cool breeze flirts with the sands of the desert.  The windows roll down, the sunroof rolls up. The spirit soars to the beats of some classic, soul wrenching music. The fog of a routine existence dissipates.  An orgasmic euphoria erupts within. It is great to be alive again.

It is the same car. It is definitely the same life. However the concoction served through the intersection of the perfect 32 degrees, perhaps the sudden blast of a favorite song or even the breeze waving through the hair, results in a completely different connection in our brain and suddenly euphoria sets in.

Life lives and thrives at the intersection.

Ants and other life forms have discovered a unique form of collective intelligence. Leaderless, extremely federated, super-efficient.  Ever wonder how ants form such a uniform pattern to/from their home and their source of food? Or how huge swarms of locust, millions of them, move in such harmony, without the long-haired conductor doing his/her bit in the center? It is quite amazing that such basic life forms in nature are able to achieve such colossal, coordinated feats.

A few folks from the homo sapiens cadre got quite intrigued by these advanced accomplishments of smaller, fellow inhabitants of mother earth. So they broke the shackles of linear learning and went and studied ants, bees, fireflies, locusts and even water droplets at a level of detail. Besides a number of PhDs, this research also resulted in some critical insights and the birth of a new term viz. ‘swarm intelligence’.

The agents (ants or locusts) apparently operate completely on their own, in their local context. However they are connected to each other and their environment through a set of very simple rules. There is no central co-ordination or leadership and also no grand goals which the community sets for itself. However federated, local actions based on a simple set of rules result in global achievements which many a team would aspire to achieve.

An ant for instance emits a substance called pheromone as it moves out of its home to look for food. The pheromone evaporates over a period of time – this is where the environment comes into play. The simple rule that ants follow is “go on the way where your little nose smells the most pheromone”. So as multiple ants move from their home looking out for food, soon some of them will go on the shortest route and on this route the smell of pheromone will be the strongest. Subsequent ants will use the simple rule and follow this route and this will further intensify the pheromone smell on the route. As a result, globally the majority of the ants will follow the shortest path to the food!

The discovery of this highly effective pattern in nature has been intersected with a number of our day to day optimization problems such as finding the shortest route from source to destination for a set of packets over a telecom network. This kind of intersection has already spurred a whole lot of innovation in multiple fields of life. An Airline ran an experiment in 2008 to see if airplane allocation to gates worked better if it were based on swarm intelligence i.e. each pilot is like an ant acting in his/her local context to get to the gate, while overall guided by a set of basic rules. Apparently, the net allocation of planes to gates on the day was much more efficient when based on swarm methods as opposed to the normal optimization algorithms.

(http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0406-planes_trains_and_ant_hills.htm)

I wonder if we have seen the full potential of this intersection yet. Imagine how we could apply this highly decentralized, leaderless pattern to other walks of life. The implicitly federated Internet environment comes to mind. Imagine the internet as the “environment” and all things connected to it as agents. If these agents could all have some basic rules under which they can operate, can their local actions tie up into a connected whole, a whole much greater in intelligence and capability than its parts? I guess the challenge will be to write and then execute the thin layer of software on each agent which will ensure that the agent follows a set of pre-defined basic rules. However if we could somehow manage to get the software installed and executed each time an agent connects to the Internet, then there is a possibility of morphing the Internet into a collective intelligence unit (brain) which is able to solve our problems based on the rules currently  configured on its agents. Perhaps the next big evolution of the www after the internet of things!

The key point however is that the next wave of innovations and successes will emanate from the intersection. Linear learning in various fields has perhaps reached its zenith or will result only in incremental advancement in our thoughts. Those bright sparks of fresh thinking and innovation will only be found at the intersection.

At the intersection of different fields and disciplines.

At the intersection of different cultures.

At the intersection of different religions and belief systems.

At the intersection of Eastern myths and Western science.

At the intersection of ying and yang.

 So when your angel, your daughter walks up to you and says she has decided to take up ‘nanofractalmedicine’ taught in 6 semesters across India, Europe and America be prepared to say yes, foot the bill and proudly walk her to the intersection!

The anatomy of a CEO

It was another one of those blazing afternoons.

I guess we were all used to the resplendence of all three seasons – hot, hotter, and blazing hot. But nobody complained. Hot had become a way of life. I and two other of my rather leisurely friends made our way to a coffee shop. The bright idea for the afternoon was to gulp down our parched throats some hot coffee, amidst the mist of aromatic shishas. Men don’t analyze too much, I guess. They just do what they got to do. Hot coffee on a hot day seemed like a perfectly harmonious thing to do.

The conversation flowed in confluence with the smoke waving through the room. Floating here and there, going nowhere. The aroma of exotic Turkish coffee mixing fluently with the mist emanating from the Shishas. Pretty much like a scene out of that old Bollywood movie ‘dam maro dam’ sans of course the lovely women floating around. 

Anyways, you perhaps are starting to ponder where or when does the CEO enter in this scene. So before I lose the skeleton of that CEO in the mist of those aromatic shishas….J

Let me cut to the chase.

The free flowing conversation received a rather sharp incision when someone asked the poignant question - “I wonder which discipline has the bigger chance of making it to CEO – Sales or Finance?” This filled me with sadness as IT did not even find a mention in the question! Anyways I ignored my hurt emotions and jumped into the conversation by offering a firm view anchored fully on empirical evidence and facts – “I believe it’s the Finance field which dominates the corner office”. Of course all three of us had firm and fully informed opinions but no one really knew what the true facts were.  So I offered to do some research…..

I picked up the top 50 brands of the World.  First of all that list itself is quite interesting. You have in it the expected McDonalds, Coca Cola et al. However increasingly the Chinese brands are breaking in as well – ever heard of ICBC (Asia), the 11^th most known brand in the World! 

Then of course there are geek firms which feature prominently on the list – Apple, Google, IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP, BB – not bad for IT. It has made it to the crème de le crème. No doubt by weaving a .net over the stock market’s eyes, whilst its brokers sipped Java!

Anyways, next I started looking at the top honchos who head up these fine companies and observed the following:

Game, Set, Match MBA: These coveted three letters M.B.A; they still dominate the Top. That too only from premier institutes such as Harvard, Wharton. So if Nicholas Carr publishes another HBR article, this time titled “MBA does not matter”, ignore him as much as you did his first one

Back to School: CEO resume are peppered with academic glories. Quite a few of them have more than one degree and that too from Ivy League institutions. Yes, there are indeed a few, high profile ones who jumped college to pursue their passion and made it to the corner office. However that is exactly what they are – a few!

The equal opportunity movement! : The corner office is quite like the Sahara desert if you were looking for women. When I came to Louis Vuitton in the list, I thought maybe, just maybe. But alas, thou too Brutus? Of course Pepsi was the pleasant variant, for reasons more than one

A kaleidoscope of experience: These guys have a rich tapestry of experience. They have ‘been there and done it’ at a number of places, in different roles and across different disciplines. The path to the top has many curves and top honchos seem to embrace each curve with a passion

Putting in the Years: Contrary to popular belief, the majority of top honchos careers are not characterized by the shifting sands of frequent job changes. In and out of companies, weaving their magic wands? Not really. Most have toiled their way in and around the bylanes of the same organization, putting in the hours, then days, then years, gaining deep experience, earning deeper credibility, building a strong foundation of trust and then claiming their right to the corner office. Old is indeed gold - at least when it comes to the top jobs @ top brands

Someone witty I met recently would say - “two turkeys don’t make an eagle, Neetan”. Perhaps a more diligent collation of empirical evidence across Fortune 500 companies may yield a different set of conclusions.

However for concluding a shisha powered, coffee triggered, light conversation amongst three deep friends, the above observations provide an adequate picture of the internals of our beloved CEO’s anatomy.

A tribute

it must have been somewhat similar

decades ago

when an inner voice would have screamed

a chord would have stuck

and millions paraded

to the melody of freedom

being part of a generation born free

i have often pondered

what drove those wonderful people

born with love in their hearts

and humility in their souls

to part with the tranquility of their homes

the loving hugs of their daughters

the protective shield of their parents

the harmony of their routines

and jump into the burning flames of protest and conflict

what drove those wonderful people

to offer those heads so fondly stroked

by the supple hands of their little ones

to the bludgeons of blood soaked batons

what drove those wonderful people

to kiss their mother’s feet

in the stillleness of the night

then disappear into oblivion

to partake in the fight

what drove those wonderful people

to dawn pristine white robes

so lovingly creased and caressed

by their doting spouses

and jump into bottomless pits

of death or endless pain

it has always felt surreal

that era gone by

those wonderful people, no more

it has always felt surreal

those uprisings for a cause

that deeper sense of purpose

that irrepressible societal core

today the streets are brimming again

with endless hearts in full bloom

a rare glimpse of an era gone by

a surreal upsurge of sentiment

where the eyes see no reason

the mind sees no loss or gain

the soul rejoices in celebrations

while the body suffers in pain

at the helm an aged, selfless being

in pristine white

full of energy and passion

awakening the collective consciousness

of a declining nation


a senseless crusade

or perhaps a true tribute

to THE Mahatma

Open Sourcing Imagination

So, sometimes my brain tweets out what I call ideas and you may call gibberish. After all there is nothing like absolute reality. Reality depends upon who is looking, upon the observer. This inderminent nature of reality itself, now proven by the science of quantum physics. So, I guess it would be quite alright for you and me to have these somewhat opposing perspectives on what I am about to share with you.

And then if my brainwaves were not warped enough, a noble soul handed me a book called ‘The Medici Effect”. I consumed it with a vengeance. It broke some of the associative barriers in my brain and got those brainwaves riding over this interesting concept of ‘innovation at the intersection’.

The net result was a further explosion of these gibberish ideas! (GIs)

With the pipeline in my brain bursting at the seams, I had another brainwave about how to manage these brainwaves! What if I open sourced them all? Shove them down the Internet pipe and choke that pipe up, instead of my brain.

Extrapolate this thought to all ideas and you will have a place for ideas to roam about, with the kind of euphoria which typically comes with along with a sense of complete freedom. To break away from the shackles of patents, IPR and lawsuits. A creative commons license for ideas.  Available to be adopted by any entrepreneur with a passion for converting ideas into innovations, which change the world or at-least a part of it.

So this blog is an attempt at this thought. Sparking an internet of ideas. Open sourcing imagination.

OSGI #1: EduVille

Every parent closely knows this particular problem statement. It is getting increasingly difficult to get kids interested in studying. There are just too many digital distractions around. On the other hand, in countries such as India, the amount of studies children have to undertake has grown exponentially. It’s a competitive country in a competitive world and the education system is geared towards exposing children to that spirit of extreme competitiveness from an early age! So how to deal with these opposing forces – decreasing mindshare on studies and an increasing load of studies to stay competitive.

This idea is about resolving the above problem in the intersection of three disparate fields - education, gaming and social networking. Start with rote subjects such as history and geography and create interesting, engaging online games which are based around these subjects – use characters from history and places from geography in the games. When the games go viral on Facebook or other social sites, children will be spending a fair amount of time on them and in their sub-conscious learning the subjects which underpin the game. Parents too will encourage children to buy and play these games! Schools will adopt them as well and install them on their library computers.

So anyone out there with the venture cap to launch EduVille on Facebook?

OSGI #2: From SMS to SGS

Quite often you have this surge of affection for someone you love and your heart wants to express this affection by sending him/her a gift. Or you see something a loved one enjoys, let’s say a type of ice-cream and you wish if you could send your loved one this here and now.

This idea is about taking sms to a new level and not just delivering messages but delivering gifts near abouts the speed of sms or a ‘short gift service’. It is also inspired from the world of microfinance, microloans. No doubt the challenge is much bigger than microfinance as this will involve micro logistics.  However I feel we are getting to that inflection point in the connectivity of the globe that someone with scale could actually deliver your wish within a few hours anywhere in the world. It will need a confluence between retailers, logistic companies and a hub platform on the internet/mobile app which accepts sgs and ties up the various players in the value chain to deliver the gift to the recipient. An initial test for this concept could be setting this up within Dubai and India, where a lot of expats have this feeling of guilt about having their old parents alone in India and time and again feel the urge to share with them something they are enjoying at the moment.

So Fedex are you game for SGS?

OSGI #3: Prada Smog Scarf

In a number of developing countries I see two-wheeler riders and especially their companions wrap a cloth around their face to save them from the traffic smog. It must be quite a challenge to get that thing wrapped around you especially when you are getting ready to go to work.

This idea is about first thinking about the design of a scarf with perforations which can be easily smoothened onto your face as you ‘gear’ up to face those polluted roads. And then of course once that design is done we can always look at making it a fashion statement. After all if mobile phones can be designer, why can’t smog scarfs be!

OSGI #4: Swarm BI Bots

The internet is becoming the world’s biggest brain and memory bank. Joe Bloke’s like you and me use the Internet to lookup almost anything we need. “where can I find an Indian restaurant in Innsbruck”  “what is the meaning of the word epiphany” “how much money do I need to carry to Thailand. What is the conversion rate from AED to Thai Baht”. Just feed your queries into the Google search monster and within a few seconds it spurts out an appropriate answer.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a search engine or a robot on the Internet dedicated to answering my business questions, when I dawn the avatar of my role in my Job. Today not many executives type away at Google to answer some of their searching questions “what has been the pricing trends of my competitors” “is this market in growth or has it reached maturity” “what is the business model of my competitor” “given a set of 10 things which have happened can I predict the competitive actions of my closest foe”

Granted that corporate information is not readily available on the internet and most sensitive information is closely guarded within enterprise firewalls. However I believe that despite these obvious constraints there is still enough corporate information available on the net – due to the pressure of disclosures by stock markets regulators, the fact that a number of the employees are on social networks typing away stuff plus all the freely available industry information.

This idea is about launching a specialized Google for enterprises. This search engine has bots inspired from the swarm technology (which incidentally is inspired from ants) which rummage through the information on the Net and convert them into meaningful intelligence for any enterprise manager. It’s like each executive has his/her very own intelligent pet bot in office. You sensitize it to what you are looking for, make it learn by feeding it some sample data and then unleash it on the Net to revert back with targeted intelligence for your enterprise needs.

If IBM’s Watson can beat humans in a game of Jeopardy with full natural language recognition, I am sure an executive bot pet for the Net can become a significant hit.

OSGI #5: Software Artineering

Something is amiss with the current age software engineering. Something doesn’t feel right about it. Too many projects get botched up and the industry figures on successful large scale IT projects are just appalling. In any other industry this level of a failure rate would have spurred numerous inventions looking to redefine this space.

I feel the issue is with the name itself – software engineering. Is software development or package acquisition and implementation really an engineering task! I am not so sure about it anymore. We might have applied the absolute wrong principles to this discipline and hence confined ourselves to a state of continuous failure.

This idea is about re-imagining the development and implementation of software. Looking at the intersection of art, engineering and software to redefine the way we build software and then deploy software. Art would play a critical role in this re-invention as there is definitely a creative side to imagining and writing software code. The idea is to create an entirely new method and process in the intersection of these fields – let’s call this software artineering.

What exactly will this new world look like, I have no clue. This idea is about having a fresh look, based on a completely new perspective, from a completely different angle and see what pops out. It might be a damp squib or something which re-invents one of the most influential fields of modern times.

That’s all I have in my kitty right now folks and guess what, the brain already feels relieved. The pipeline is now much more relaxed after the unload. There was one other idea which I gave to a couple friends who are serial entrepreneurs, and run an imaginary company called ‘rocket singh’.  If the company and the idea remain imaginary, then I will open source that idea in the sequel to this blog.

If someday any of these ideas transition to an innovation and someone out there makes an enterprise out of them, please remember that charity begins at home and you can start with my home which accepts donations in cash and kind J

With cheers to every Startup out there changing the world, this is Neetan the serial dreamer signing off …..

Honey, i.t just shrunk the world

Once upon a time…

Expressing emotions was linked to being human; today MIT has created a socially intelligent robot Leonardo; go on….. feed the keywords to the Google monster and watch it spurt out a YouTube link to Leonardo.

Powers such as mind control were only bestowed onto the sages who roamed the Himalayan heights and performed their mystical rites. Now we are able control the brain of a fly using Optogenetics. More is yet to come. Check out Gero Miesenboeck  @ Ted for a fascinating talk on this subject.

Mules used to carry our load up the slopes and along many a tricky terrain. Today Boston Dynamic’s ‘Big Dog’ is able to do so with as much dexterity as a real mule. It is completely in control despite a good old kick on its side and just goes about its job unemotionally as an ass would do.

Biology used to be defined as the study of living organisms; today biologyistechnology.com; the human genome project took over 12 years and upwards of 3 billion dollars to sequence the human genome. Today there are startup companies such as Complete Genomics envisioning sequencing your genome for $5000 within a year and maybe $100 within 5 years.  Check out their web site. It could be that of any technology company selling BI solutions, except of course this one is analyzing the dynamics of life itself.

It started with the innocuous printing of greeting cards. Today they are talking about 3D printing human organs!  A whole assortment of innovation is being sparked with 3D printing technology.  It is reaching an inflexion point, all set to take off.

Companies used to protect their IP by filing patents galore; today breakthrough ideas roam freely on Startup web sites, right under the noses of uninterested competitors

We used to prefix sustainable to competitive advantage; today we prefix ephemeral to it.

And there is one factor underpinning all these changes. Technology. THE common denominator.  Powering a wide array of game changing innovations across a spectrum of disciplines.

Now, you may wonder what has genetics got to do with my business or indeed how does an emotional robot threaten my competitive advantage. And for all you know you might be spot on and all this might not impact your business at all. Or maybe, just maybe the creative thoughts these technologies spawn or the branches of mini-innovations they unleash might already be causing small tremors under the foundations of your competitive advantage. Shaking its roots, in preparation for the big one which will uproot your business.

I often wonder about Barnes and Noble’s executive teams having a discussion on Jeff’s innovation on the web, when it was not written about in business books. I can see them saying “Jeff, who?”!  As irony has it, a few years later some of the hot selling, fast moving books on Barnes and Noble’s depleting brick and mortar shelves are about Jeff and his disruptive business model.

The story of course doesn’t stop there. In the next round Amazon again caught the large incumbents napping.  Amazon swept the ground under the feet of big players in IT infrastructure by venturing into and then conquering the world of cloud computing. Who in their wildest dream would have thought about competition in infrastructure provision from a book seller!

So I guess executive teams, irrespective of the business they lead, need to pause, and think deeply about these shifting sands underpinned by exponential movements in technology.

Competitive advantage has indeed gotten ephemeral in the shadow of this continuous barrage of technology innovation.

i.t is indeed shrinking our world.

It is shrinking the distance between you and your competitors.

It is shrinking the distance between you and your customers.

It is shrinking the distance between you and a completely unexpected new entrant.

It is shrinking the distance between imagination and reality.

Are you ready for it?

Are you ready to reimagine your business?

Are you ready to broaden your thinking and perspectives while i.t shrinks the world around you?

The Organic Organisation

World annual FDI inflows rose from an average of $50 billion per year in the period 1981-85 to $1.1 trillion in 2009. A 21 fold increase!

Women in Rwanda have since 2005 been able to display and sell their hand-woven basket creations in Macy’s, at the other end of the world. These baskets sell like hot cake and disappear from the shelves as fast as they appear.

The consultants have a field day on these facts. They announce a new world order. Managers get swayed by the rhetoric. The world is flat; The world is my oyster, it is also my market, as well as my supply chain. Globalization is the predominant force and I better get my strategy’s sails aligned with its strong winds.

Every weekday beginning at 6 a.m., sellers and buyers from around the world converge on the Aalsmeer auction complex near Amsterdam to trade more than 20 million flowers and plants, one-third of which are roses. More than 1,500 foreign growers from countries as far away as Kenya and Israel now send their products to Holland to be auctioned.

G20 governments have introduced more trade barriers, including export restrictions, in the past six months than in previous periods since the financial crisis began, according to the monitoring report by the World Trade Organization on 24 May 2011.

People get 95% of their news from domestic sources.

90% of the world’s people will never leave the country where they are born.

Trade barriers rose thick and fast as soon as the economic going got tough during the recession. Summits designed to curb such practices, with exotic names such as ‘The Doha Rounds’, miserably failed to reach consensus or conclusions.

The currently ongoing G8 summit is like a kitty party; a lot gets discussed, pleasantries get exchanged between expensive suits, biscuits get consumed with disdain, nothing gets achieved.

The consultants announce a new paradigm; The world is as round as round can get. Local is the new global. Better to be a monopoly at home than a grain of sand on the world beach.  I better anchor in my domestic market, in my protected comfort zone. The managers hunker down.

These dynamic paradoxes of our business environment are like Natrajan’s cosmic dance.  In perpetual motion, a constant struggle between crests and troughs, in a state of continuous flux, like the bubbly waters of the Ganges.

Globalization versus protectionism, local versus global, an independent set of nation states versus an integrated global society.

Strategic responses soar to similar paradoxical heights.

Enterprises first vertically integrate to own and control the entire value chain or achieve the zenith of scale and size. They acquire, they merge, they partner. They become behemoths worthy of respect and fear.

Then soon after they shed off SBU’s in a hurry to focus on the core. They de-merge, sell off and divorce away their partners. It was only recently that I read how brilliantly Cisco had acquired Linksys and kept it at arm’s length using the ‘adapt’ rather than ‘aggregate’ strategy for M&A integration. However the tweet world is now alive with the fact that Cisco might sell off Webex and Linksys to focus on its core!

So what does one do in this era of paradoxes? Which strategies to deploy? Which jargon will remain so and which ones will evolve into the next big thing?

I am personally fascinated with the Honeycomb archetype to give organizations a stab at managing life’s increasing paradoxes. To architect the enterprise as a collection of small autonomous cells held together both by a common language and a crystal clear purpose. To power the strategic intent to ‘dream big, deliver small, move fast’.

Maybe it’s time to shed the legacy of legacy organization structures, cut through their fabric and carve out nimble, organizational cells instead. To breakdown big business processes into smaller services, big teams into micro-teams of sizes 3-5.

Maybe it is time to re-invent the way we see an enterprise - from a collection of big departments (HR, Finance, blah blah) to smaller cells each performing a distinctive service, in service of the customer. Self performing, self-motivated high performing cells requiring little supervision or management. As a whole these cells forming an organizational Honeycomb.  A structure designed from ground up to be able to sense and respond to the world’s curve balls. Agile and nimble by birth.

Inspired by nature.

An organic organization.

The four letter conundrum

IT folks have a fetish for equating quality to four letter words.

And size as well as height does matter when it comes to acronyms in the IT world. The higher the level and the more enigmatic sounding the word (I am ISO…….ISO27001!), the higher it moves in our hierarchy of respect. We love these acronyms- CMMI, ITIL, VALIT, COBIT, et al. We include them on our CVs. We proudly use them on our signatures. It’s a secret society created by IT, of IT, for IT.

No one outside, especially our customers in the business understand what the bleep are we talking about!

Before you form an opinion that I do not love these acronyms, hold your horses just yet. I have been in the IT world for 21 plus years now, so YES I too have a fetish for these profound four letters.

Quite often I get off from the wrong side of my right bed, full of pride and honor and announce to my wife how I have attained nirvana in the world of IT four letters. How I have climbed the Himalayan peaks of their levels and achieved lofty heights. How, given my conquest of these insurmountable heights, everyone in the family should bow in front of me and treat me like the God of Geekland, I am .

The response is usually in other four letters which incidentally are also quite famous in the IT world, however best kept verbal in context.

So the point is, whether I can impress my erudite family or not, I too have a passion for these acronyms. They represent an important aspect of quality. Process and frameworks are essential to guide a large workforce towards consistency in the quality of their outcomes.

However there is more to a passion for quality than just frameworks. The secret potion I believe lies in the intent of the workforce, in the shared sensibilities of the people. Therein lies the leadership challenge. How to engage the hearts, minds and the passion of a large workforce to significantly up the ante on quality? How to achieve a state wherein high quality is a way of life and not just a certificate embellishing corporate mahogany walls?

A number of strategies are deployed to try and get close to this state. However my favorite mantra to tackle this challenge, is encapsulated in this beautiful phrase ‘Show me the Taj’

The engineers on project teams and at the back office need to be up, close and personal to the goals their efforts are enabling for the business. They need to feel the pulse of the business and appreciate what underpins success. Sometimes an overdose of vision, mission, core values, value proposition, strategies, goals, objectives and other such terms can confuse the grass roots on exactly where the company is going and what it expects from them. A simple statement of ‘purpose’ which covers the essence can get the message across and its simplicity makes it sticky.

Nothing however beats conversations directly with the business managers to get close to the big picture and the final outcomes expected from IT projects. However the way IT goes about its business today, it ends up creating a two class society – the front office account managers and analysts who get to see and hear the business and the back office engineers who are allocated technical tasks, largely oblivious to or disconnected with the business outcomes.  This way of working seemingly optimizes the use of resources however misses the opportunity to engage the engineers at a deeper level.

There is a big difference in the subconscious engagement if an engineer believes he/she is building a search routine as opposed to knowing that he/she is organizing the world’s information. A big difference in their internal commitment to quality if they believe they are laying a brick as opposed to building the Taj.

Leaders need to build a framework to effectively show the Taj to all team members and in doing so ignite their creative spark and their passion for quality.

In the shadow of the Taj

The tree had a great significance. It was the center of gravity for all romantic activity. The damsel and the dude draped in motley colors went round and round, sometimes across, sometimes in creative new patterns.  After all that beating around the bush, literally, when it came to the much anticipated kiss, the camera just panned upwards, through the branches to the clouds. This left the audience gasping, completely out of breadth after the sensual experience of a romantic Bollywood near-miss, kiss.

The burly buffalos were living examples of the existence of parallel quantum realities. They carved out their own quantum space in the middle of what politicians referred to as roads. Munching away to glory, oblivious to the mass of humanity around them and at peace with the vehicles flowing past in either direction, creating a cacophonic symphony with their horns. The buffalos did not care; they did not lose their temper, did not take stress and maintained a sense of calm and composure. They just enjoyed their siesta time with friends and family. Commuters craftily maneuvered around the buffalos, on what they fondly referred to as a sea of pot holes. Tar was used in dribs and dabs to embellish around the craters, a special form of art perfected by all Government contractors. 

Believe it or not communities existed much before Zuckerberg, frustrated with his inability to join up-market university clubs, created his own on Facebook!  They were particularly rampant in the middle class diaspora. The entire neighborhood was one big family. Love, affection and care flowed freely across and beyond. People lived physically apart but were closely connected through the many peaks and troughs of life.  This social network was unique. It gave all participants a strong base on which to anchor their lives, extended a sense of belonging, wove a safety net around all members and it was a network wholly in flesh, not over wires intertwined through a world wide web.

Calorie was a proper noun. Perhaps the name of a beautiful mademoiselle from the French countryside. No one knew its relationship to food. Three sumptuous meals a day with a disdain for the heart and a carefree delight for the tummy. Oil, butter and ghee flowing through an aromatic kaleidoscope of curries. Exotic spices galore, from all parts of a vast country intermingled with the simplicity of rice and wheat.  Each region, each state, each city, each family using the same ingredients but creating unique culinary experiences. A food connoisseur’s delight.

The snowcapped ranges of the Himalayas reaching out to the skies, paying homage to the myriad Hindu Gods which reside in the heavens above. The pristine and chill waters of the Ganges, hurrying through the planes, greening everything on their way.  In the dimming light of dusk, the flowing waters so often adorned by pretty petite lamps lighted in hope, in prayer, in gratitude. An annual calendar embellished with festivals and festivities. To celebrate relationships, to celebrate love, to celebrate life, with color, with lights, with family, friends, neighbors and utter strangers. A culture of inclusivity in the joys of life, sharing the burdens of pain, a lot of pride and very little prejudice. A deep historic and cultural base built on centuries of human endeavor, tolerance, creativity, music and art.  

This was my India in the 80s. This is where I grew up. This is where I discovered my value system. This is where I nurtured my emotions and my innocence. This is where I discovered my die-hard fetish for curries. This is where I learnt to tolerate, to respect, to include, to honor.

This is where I dreamt about running around that coveted tree!

In the soothing, comforting and romantic shadow of the incredible Taj.

The Leadership Chronicle

I think a leader is someone whom people follow J

How about that!

A simple and effective gauge of a trait which many a management guru has defined using many more esoteric and exotic criteria.

But think about it. You are the leader in your organization. You have charted a clear way forward for where you want to take your enterprise. You are driving ahead with a passion to meet that vision. But when you look behind in enthusiastic anticipation, you find barren and deserted sand dunes. There is no one behind following your lead. Or maybe there are a few tormented souls, driven more by the chains of hierarchy as opposed to the call of their hearts.  If indeed that is the case my friend, then I would conjecture that the arc of your honeymoon period might be long but it will definitely and steadily bend towards failure.

So what does it take for a leader to be followed? Below are some of my favorite mantras on the art of leadership.

A bold vision is paramount. A pessimistic Leader perpetually content with the status quo, with a run of the mill mindset fits like a square in a circle of spiraling change, which underpins business today. Leaders need to carve out visions which catapult their enterprises far ahead of competition. They need to dovetail vision with the ability to take courageous, bold decisions in operations. Don’t just sit there and bask in the success of the status quo, dream big, embrace and drive change and strive for relentless continuous improvement.

The hero stories of the dominant, snooty, ‘I know it all and I will tell you what to do’ leader are ready to be confined to the annals of history. The information age demands a more inclusive and approachable style. I call this ‘benevolent leadership’. Not to be confused with being soft or being uninterested in driving profits for the stakeholders. That is not what I mean by benevolent. The keywords which come to mind in description are ‘genuine, humility, passionate, transparent, inclusive, relaxed persona’. Genuine deserves a special mention. Very often leaders give lip service to open door policies. Their doors are definitely open but minds firmly shut to feedback from the grass roots. And closed minds are openly visible to an increasingly savvy workforce. The days of the dominant boss are numbered if not already extinct. A relaxed and inclusive persona which promotes unhindered expression, open critique and contribution at all levels is the new mantra of the information age.  An age in which contribution more than credentials defines who you are and the fellowship you command.

Perhaps the most important mantra for the leader of this age is the ability to connect with and inspire people. Ability to command loyalty and respect. Ability to delegate and then hold accountable. Ability to create an environment where people bring their heart and souls to work and not just their minds. Some people naively translate all this into being nice and being weak! A leader in this age needs to be simultaneously tough and demanding as well as loved and respected. Today’s workforce is fully plugged in and switched on to reality. They understand that making profit on a sustainable basis requires a leader to act sharply on mediocrity and continuously strive for high performance from the workforce. However leaders get carried away with the demanding part of the equation and conveniently forget the loved and respected bit. A healthy balance in a Leader’s character is critical to take people along on a journey towards the vision. People is the glass ball that a leader is holding. If dropped it won’t bounce back and instead shatter into a thousand pieces, wrecking along with it any dreams of delivering the vision. Inspiring and engaging people is the prime role of the Leader, this is where the rubber hits the road. Add a multicultural workforce to the mix and this task becomes even more daunting. But then, anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. Surmounting an agitated ocean of people challenges is what distinguishes the men from the boys, the true leaders from the ‘also rans’.

So are you looking to lead in the information age?

Where news and information in the social world moves much faster than you can click send on your corporate email. Where individuals feel fully empowered. Where power has firmly transcended from the masses to the individual. Where the world is truly everyone’s oyster. Where talent can vote with their feet to almost any part of the world. Where the landscape is competitive in real time. Where new business models are getting ready to threaten your vision even as you read this blog.

Well, if this is what you want to do then…

Look over your shoulder and make sure you are being followed by an enthusiastic bunch of inspired, passionate, multi-cultural and capable people, fully in tune with your melody.

THE Valley

I am sure there are a number of nature adorned valleys out there in the world.  However for the quintessential Geek, the one that counts is Silicon Valley, California.

I had an opportunity recently to visit the Valley and explore it up, close and personal.

A couple things that struck a deeper chord…...

And The Oscar goes to

The ecosystem.  

A humming, vibrant, well-oiled ecosystem is at play in the Valley. That’s what makes it tick. That’s what has made it the nerve center for IT innovation. At the heart of the ecosystem are top notch knowledge powerhouses such as Stanford, Berkley, Carnegie Mellon et al.  Their focus – to work at the grass roots level and provide a breeding ground for learning, experimentation and research.

Then there is the funding tributary next to the Bay. A high density cluster of Venture Capitalists and Angel investors whose bread and butter business model is to connect funds with innovations, to breathe life into ‘workable’ ideas and convert Joe Blokes like you and me into serial entrepreneurs.

This network’s nodes are also embellished with some of the top companies in the world who either grew up there from startup or have been born somewhere else but have setup their innovation labs in the Valley. All this attracts the world’s best geek talent and media celebrates each success of every new startup and/or entrepreneur publicly. This creates an atmosphere of excitement and happening in the Valley. Even the almighty contributes by adorning the region with a nippy and sunny climate throughout the year.

The ‘ecosystem pattern’ is a winning business model. Each node feeds the other and the network effect creates a virtuous cycle of continuous and sustainable innovation. Fascinating, to say the least.

A free and empowered human spirit

Quite often individual passion for unhindered expression, the inherent human need to contribute, to accomplish, to fail, to get up and run again, the sharpness of individual intellect, the carefree human spirit, is stymied by an undertone of racial, cultural and all other exotic forms of discrimination.

However in the Valley I sensed that history had broken its shackles and leaped into the 21^st century. The human spirit is free. To explore, to express, to challenge, to learn, to share, to contribute, to accomplish, to cherish, to celebrate. Nobody seemed to give a two hoots where you came from. No one asked, no one told, no one bothered. All that mattered was what you knew, what inventions you were cooking, what value you could contribute. I met professionals, youngsters, academics, fund raisers - people from all walks of life all glowing in the bright sunshine of true human empowerment.  A diversity in form tightly bound by an aptitude for software engineering, a love for IT and a passion for disrupting existing paradigms. It is no wonder that this free human spirit is able to unleash its potential time and again and drive a continuous flow of innovations along the pristine and blue waters of the adjoining Bay.

The Valley more than lived up to its expectations.

It is humming with excitement.

In abated anticipation for the next wave of innovations that it is fondly nurturing in its cradle.

Nowhere, get me there..

the melody in the beat

of a heartbeat in flux

the palpations

the elation

a rumble in the belly

a souring soul

each breath as if

racing the next

a time gone by

a feeble memory

a feeling now jaded

a distant dream

a paradise lost

does love depreciate

as all other things material

does affection dissipate

through the schisms in our hearts

does time frost our feelings

for once yawning souls

do responsibilities take a toll

on once a spirited soul

is there anything in life

anything at all

which is perpetual

so why, I sit and wonder

should love be

maybe a refresher is due

a resurrection whose time has come

maybe new melodies are desperate

to tango, to jibe

with the beats of a heart

long in need of a restart

a break from the shackles

the manacles of the norm

a leap into nowhere…….

cognisant of consequences

yet innocent to the impact

a pang of fear

that truth may go naked

a dash of anxiety

about budding possibilities

the spirit moves north again

the soul reignited

a new path

a new dawn

a new hope

maybe, just maybe

nowhere will get me there.

Will the magic of Indian Software industry last?

I don't think so until a tectonic plate shifts underneath the Indian software industry to usher in a fundamental change in focus. The word 'back shoring' is gaining popularity. Cliché’s can transition rapidly from fads to facts in this globally connected, word of mouth driven, social powered, internet age.

The genesis of the industry was on a cost saving proposition. The herd pattern took over, large deals got larger and Indian software companies grew from garages to ‘info’plexs. Certification became a fad and everyone chased ‘the CMMI stamp’ to signify quality. With the boom came the bane. Engineers treat companies like guest houses- stay a while, learn and then move on. With such stupendous growth the focus has been on volume as opposed to quality. And over the times, the economic price-demand curve has come to the fore with even base costs in India not being as competitive as earlier deemed.

The cost proposition is waning. I would conjecture a guess that with respect to TCO we are much worse off with offshoring/outsourcing as opposed to doing it in-house. Two key factors contribute to this in my view – first the high management overhead which the company needs to retain in order to govern the project so that they actually get delivered to promise and secondly the cost of quality resulting mainly from the software engineers being perpetually in-transition.

With the core value proposition under threat, quality of delivery in any case being an issue and state of world economy making protectionism and retaining jobs locally a priority, I think this industry needs a shake up to stay relevant.

My two mantras for the industry’s renewal:

·    Significantly yank up the volume on project management. Companies end up spending a fortune on management overheads as the project management support from the offshoring vendor is largely appalling, especially the emotional intelligence component which is so critical to delivering successful projects. It becomes immediately apparent that project managers have just grown through the software engineering line and not placed adequate attention on grooming in the art of management. This needs to be addressed at the grass roots level as IT project management is probably more about management than technology. Getting an IT project to deliver its promise is an art and not science and requires leaders at the helm to achieve success

·    Lead software engineering innovation – invent rather than just follow. India has captured market share in the business of software engineering but has done little to spearhead the field in terms of innovating it. Most software engineering innovations still emanate from the enviable Silicon Valley. New programming languages such as Ruby, Bid Data management innovations such as Hadoop, NoSQL, great companies built around IT such as Apple, Google, innovations in the mobility sphere such as the explosion of App stores et al have their roots outside India. A passion and fetish for software engineering innovation needs to seep into the IT ecosystem in India. The industry needs to stop thinking and promoting software engineering as a commodity and positioning it at a strong force to get competitive advantage in business. For this to happen, some of the industry stalwarts, the universities, the fund owners, the startups, the entire ecosystem needs to shed its conservative approach to doing business, promote experimentation, spend intellect on research and take bold steps forward to shape the future of business innovation through engineering. This will then create a sustainable comparative advantage and a new proposition much higher in the value food chain than just 'we reduce your costs of software development'

I feel India with its bright minds, its academic grilling and strong foundations, die hard focus of its people to commitment and hard work, its strong cultural roots, its current positive state of mind - has the right ingredients to create a sustainable business model around the IT industry cluster and surmount any threats.  

However it is the Internet age afterall. Past laurels are not a guarantee for future sustainability. The winds of change need to be felt and absorbed pro-actively. Bold changes need to be ushered in at a swift pace.

Winners in this age will be defined by their ability to sense and respond to change as opposed to basking in the sunshine of a sinking sun.

SOA for my mother

Looking at the mirror one day I realised that I had reached the pinnacle of all learning. Knowledge hit me from all angles and I absorbed it, soaked it into my psyche with a passion. I had mastered the art of such complicated and diverse disciplines such as value driven engineering, expectation management, stakeholder management, time boxing and risk management with its kaleidoscope of red, amber and blues. I was ready to take on any corporate problem using my kitty of management tools, models and frameworks. Important words such as empowerment, swot analysis, exogenous influences, and diversification were oozing out of my 300 buck Brands branded grey suit and 30 buck tie from that shop which has ‘sale’ hardcoded on its mirror….. these important words always in a state of readiness to pounce upon and plonk themselves onto any conversation or PowerPoint slide they could lay their hands on. With the confidence of having Porter as a close relative, I looked at the reflection in the mirror and felt that I had finally arrived, in the corporate world…….

A wise person once said ‘it only takes a small needle to bust a bloated balloon’ (what a stupid quote, wise man, ya right!) Anyway, that wise person was probably referring to the rather sharp poke I got on my bloated confidence when an erudite and noble soul asked me to do a 5 slide presentation in 15 minutes to explain SOA to him as if explaining it to my mother.

SOA for my mother!! I immediately checked with Porter for a framework to crack this one and suddenly he was missing from the list of my next of kin. With trepidation I remembered the last time I had proudly announced our achievements on the Paradise Datamart to my mother she had equally enthusiastically asked me about which shopping mall. Encapsulation, orchestration, granularity, decoupling would equate to electrical wiring, music, wheat and marriage to my mother.

In that moment of anxiety as I scratched my brain for a simple way to explain SOA to someone with no IT knowledge, it dawned onto me that one of the true leadership challenges of corporate life was to explain increasingly complex situations and issues in increasingly simple ways, almost as if to your mother. After sweeping out all the models from my clouded head I could come up with only one example to explain SOA to my mother.

It relates to the kitchen. In the kitchen things are beautifully connected to each other - the sink to the dish washer, the gas to the cooker and disparate things such as refrigerator, kitchen sink, dishwasher, cooker, gas work together in harmony so that my mother can cook me a great meal. If however for some reason the dish washer breaks down we only need to remove it from the kitchen and not bring down the sink or indeed the entire kitchen to fix the dish washer. However sometimes we don’t build our applications like our kitchen, at least I didn’t. We end up connecting our dish washers with the sink in such a manner that if the washer has to be yanked out and used somewhere else, the entire sink has to be replaced.

So my mother’s kitchen is fully SOA compliant while some of the applications I built were unfortunately not so.

An MRI awakening

Doctors have stepped down from their angelic thrones. Their perceptual monopoly over the minds of patients has started to blur. The engagement in a Doctor's cabin is now more 'clinical' than ever before. Last time I went to see one I experienced the clinical execution of a well honed consulting process which went through the following phases (1) a review of my file for historic insight (2) a pointed question and answer session (3) a physical examination of my problem area (4) a collaborative review of 5 strategic options for resolution of my problem (5) my formal consent on one of the options (6) finally, at long last, execution of the agreed resolution strategy. Phew! Doctor as a management consultant with specialization in healing is here to stay.

The apparently bipartite discussion around strategic cure options was quite exhilarating. The options elaborated by the doctor were clear as mud and I was reminded of my days in the South when I used to nod my head in complete understanding and appreciation of the menu options announced in Tamil by the zealous waiter. After eagerly listening to the tambi’s enthusiastic recital, in true panju style, I would either order a Dosa or a Thali! In order not to dent his enthusiasm I would add “ put some extra takali”. Thereby leaving the waiter with the false impression that his recital had been well understood and the customer had taken an informed decision thanks to his efforts.

To the uninitiated ‘takali’ means tomato in Tamil – about the only word that I learnt in a few memorable years stay in the South.

Unfortunately, the options presented by the doctor bear no resemblance to Masala Dosa and I did not have a medical panacea equivalent to ‘takali’.

My views on the state of medical science and its undertakers thus honed, I was invited to an MRI scanning session. The invitation was a consequence of problems with my neck, which was probably due to its uncanny habit of popping up, down and round about at even a hint of a pretty damsel in the vicinity. A wise man once said – old habits, Bruce Willis.

Anyways, armed with the strength of a cynic, ready to smell a rose and think of a coffin, I ventured into the MRI scanning center. A lovely nurse with a German hard-nosed ex-pression efficiently ushered me into the changing room. I had to strip off all worldly possessions to gain entry into the MRI scanner’s domain. I tried to maintain an overt composure that belied the inferno in the belly. The drumming in the belly had a stark resemblance to the rumblings leading up to a public speech I did a few years ago. However, I continued to smile like Sanjeev Kapoor after he inadvertently gobbled a few drinks in ‘Angoor’, as the nurse struck two ear buds into my ears (offcourse, where else!) and led me into ‘The Room’.

The beast looked quite daunting with its ugly open-ended mouth waiting in anticipation for its next hapless victim. I felt like fleeing and cursed the neck for its infidel overtures. In keeping with the modern-age ethos of the medical profession, the nurse displayed no signs of compassion. Her KPI was to get me in and out of the beast within a period of 25 minutes and ensure that I didn’t run away with the clinic provided nightie-equivalent I had to don in order to entertain the beast whilst I stayed in its august company. What cannot be cured has to be endured. My neck had left me no other option but to reluctantly surrender myself to the beast.

I lay down on my back, with arms folded, face facing up and the sides of the beast right up against my own. At the stroke of a key, the beast started gobbling me up, slow and steady, into its dome. In a few seconds, the beast had engulfed me completely and I had absolutely no room for maneuver. In order to avoid a feeling of claustrophobic panic I immediately closed my eyes. The nurse announced from another planet that the scanning was about to begin and I should gear up for some high decibel noise. Another keystroke and the silence was broken by a sharp sound piercing my ears - “tok, tok tok” went the scanner at an irritatingly consistent frequency. “tok tok tok” – “tok tok tok”.

I tried to make music in my mind dovetailed with the beast’s toks and day dreamt of an interview with NDTV where I beamingly relate the unique inspiration of my top-of-the-chart musical score. My dream was rudely interrupted by the nurse’s distant announcement that the ordeal was coming to an end in a few minutes. Enthused, I opened my eyes….

Life only needs a few moments to pass you by. As I opened my eyes to see myself completely surrounded by a machine in semi-darkness, I felt the strongest feeling of unease I have ever felt in my life. My heart started racing at top speed as sweat beads swiftly ordained my forehead. I felt impounded, impotent, captured and felt a strong urge to break through the shackles and run for my freedom. In those few moments, I truly understood and appreciated the value of freedom – freedom to enjoy the clear blue skies, freedom to bask in glorious sunshine, freedom to follow what your head thinks and your heart desires, freedom to socialize, to interact, to walk, to run, to debate, to discuss, to read, to write, to chase your fantasies and your aspirations.

Not every fall is into an abyss. Not every opening in a tunnel has a train on the other side. As life punctuates our existence with a few disappointments we develop amnesia towards its highs. On that day, during those few moments, I realized how blessed and lucky I was to be free and my heart bled for those who were perpetually confined to the four walls of their hospital rooms.

As I was released from the clutches of the beast I felt a sudden surge of liberation as well as a sense of calmness in my soul. The scanner had failed to unearth anything unusual in my neck however had succeeding in awakening a new perspective to life.