Work hard, Die Hard.

Agencies do this to you.

You lose all track of time only to keep up with deadlines. They bring back old vices. They make you stay up all night.

You start tending to yourself in the midst of chaos. You are your own office boy and your own boss.

You cannot deliver and you cannot delegate. Yet you do both.

Your body aches nonstop and you don't know what to do. After all you cannot pop meds every single day!

You skip breakfast and you skip lunch. You do not eat dinner because the 90 cups of tea you've had have killed your appetite. And your sleep.

You sleep for 3 hours on weekdays and wake up because you know you missed your deadline. You stay up all weekend to come to terms with who you are. The day you sleep for 8 hours on a weekend, you wake up with a hangover of sorts. Your body doesn't recognize 8 hour sleep after all.

You do not know whether you are 18 or 50 years old. You don't know if this is what a learning curve is all about. You wonder if you've gone up the hierarchy or slipped down 2 places.

You think of people who matter to you and the ones to whom you've stopped mattering because you were so busy chasing time.

You try to relax on your way home. You plug your iPod and it seems like noise. You curse the music industry for 10 minutes in your head and agencies for another 40.

You summarize your day as 'fucked up.' When it is not that actually. But how do you even differentiate a good day from a bad one?

Probably the day you hear - Good job! from someone. Anyone. Even the guy who clears your desk of tea cups. And somewhere within you know the day will never come.

But you know you've done a great job. And you say this to yourself - "I work for a fancy agency. Professional hazards are probably what I experience everyday. Never mind, I am awesome!"

P.S. The title is grammatically incorrect just to keep it open to interpretation!

I can't help it but bitch a bit...!

I can't help it. Really. I work in a start-up where we do not have our own cubicles yet. We sit in a conference room, all of us, and work. The frustration I go through, working with these guys, warrants a blog post. Each one of these people here is a weirdo in his own way. I will refrain from using names here but here it goes: 

NT - Worked with Reliance group of companies for a long time and once almost said he quit because he was too smart for the Ambani brothers. He steps into office and starts talking non-sense. Today's example - I deliver personality development lessons. (PERSONALITY?! Do you even know what that is?) He spends 5 hours out of 9 talking to customer service of some company or the other. Typical marketing chap - Full of faff. 

CB - He is a Telugu in this land of beautiful Hindi speaking people. He was over joyed to know that I am Telugu too. So much so that I thought he might come hugging and kissing me. (Eeyuuuu!) I do not feel an iota of happiness on seeing him. People who know me, would know how secular I am and do not believe in regionalism. Anyway, he smells of something between Pan Parag and Meswak toothpaste. He sits right next to me and the smell (read: stench) is too strong for my liking. He can't say Satyam. He says Sachyam. Sicko.

SD - A bong who looks like a mallu. Sings in his ugly voice all day and thinks he could give Kishore Kumar a run for his money. He tends to get louder when I am visibly irritated. He loses temper at the slightest and yells at people. :O I am waiting for the day he is rude to me and I will give him a piece of my mind! That said, he is good at his job. So it's ok.

AA - Extremely polite and extremely lazy. He runs away from work and blatantly refuses to do stuff unless he is shouted at by the big boss. One of those difficult people to work with but are so polite you can't do anything about it.

IK - The biggest dick head I ve ever met. He has been demoted and has almost been given the pink slip. He still spends the ENTIRE freakin day sitting at the reception, flirting with the receptionist (who visibly hates him.) Beat this - This dude has an MBA degree from some university in the UK and now, post-demotion makes 10K a month. 

VR - or popularly known as part time employee. He comes in at 9 30 (office starts at 9) He surfs the web, downloads music, gives me rude answers when I ask him about to-dos and then goes out of office. He comes back at about 5PM and logs out at 6 30. He'd rather not be there. He is supposedly a web designer. What he does is what I can do too - pick up free ready made templates online and substitute titles with our company name - all in the name of 'designing.' 

There are 2 other girls who are absolutely no non-sense. They might not be ideators or greatly skilled but are good at what they do. The live and let live. I totally adore them and we are a trio in sharing the frustration of having to sit with these weird men. We need help here at Conscience Compass! 

...and I learn some more!

The best thing about each new day is that there is so much to learn and the best thing about learning is that it never stops. It is probably the most continuous process ever. I have learned so much in the last 24 hours that its mad. I can't or won't give context here... this is a blog after all, not a book! But ya, if there is some context you need just to understand something, write to me. :)

1. For every 60 pages of a girl's emotions, there is only 1 page of a guy's emotions that you can get. The most emotional guy can give you probably 5 pages for every 60. But that's it. 

2. Saying the same thing again and again to a guy does not help you to drive a point home, but instead drains him out beyond repair. For instance - "I Understand" said once will tell the guy that you understand. But "I understand" being said 30 times means - "Shut up! I don't think you do! Just leave me alone!"

3. Girls across the globe have wondered if guys like dumb girls or super smart, self sufficient girls. The answer: 

With them, the girl should be a little dumb. So that the guy feels he is 'in control'. BUT while in his social circle and with money matters, the girl should be as smart as she can get. Upright and in full control of herself. (Almost unanimous conclusion after extensive discussions with hundreds of girls. So if any guy disagrees, he is in denial and if a girl disagrees, she should feel exceptional!)

4. Everyone adjusts - sooner or later. Everyone adjusts - with someone or the other. 

Some people adjust WAY later with stupid people. That's part of life. 

5. Some business gyaan - A new concept without much muscle or money to back it up is extremely vulnerable in a booming economy. Whereas, when there is a slow down, it is the best time for a 'content-rich and financially-poor' concept to build up and gain momentum, fix those problems and be ready to look for funding when the hibernation is nearing an end. 

6. Ideators can always be only 1, 2 or at max 3 for each new concept. 'Too many cooks spoil the broth' is the most appropriate in this situation. If you have too many people trying to tweak the initial idea, there will be just too many ideas not blending and people who will only feel the distance between them grow. After a while, it will become an ego fight than become a ideation discussion. 

Well.. there's a lot more but I think this much is good enough for a blog! 

All work and some play keeps Jinu so damn happy!

Life has been awesome so far! Attention deficit from one end is being taken care of by loads of other friends! Really, friends are the most important, irreplaceable things of my (anyone's) life! I can kill my friends if I feel like it and they will not as much as utter a word. Wish other important people were like my friends too! sigh! :( But never mind, life's beautiful still! 

My best friend's going to start living in with his girl friend, another good friend got an interview call from Harvard (yayyy!!) and I will get a new hire to work with me!!! I am looking forward to a drinking night tonight with some friends and some awesome music! 

There is so much I learn here everyday, obviously the hard way, since we are just a start-up. I can see first hand that the most important lesson to build a strong organization is to hire the right people. Yes, if you hire level A people, you will get A+ work, if you hire B level employees you get C level work and if you hire C level employees, then you do not get any work. And if you are so dumb that you hired below C level employees, then honestly, you wont last longer than a year. You would have come so far away and you would be so lost that even hiring the entire Harvard pass outs for that year cannot bring you up. Also, hiring the right people is when you hire either of the 2: (1.)  People who take immense ownership. Who will mould themselves as required just so that they are able to deliver. Even if they are not big shot management graduates or do not carry 10 years of learning behind them, as long as they take the project as a personal mission, the organization will look up. Else hire (2.) Extremely focused, career oriented individuals who see the organization's success as a plus on their resume, who will be ruthlessly clever to make it work and who will sweat it out. 

And if you have a decent mix of the As and Bs - you will work wonders with whatever your concept is. But there are other things as well. The ideator should never feel like the boss with his core set of guys. He should feel like a team, not even the team-lead. There are always a bunch who do the mundane but extremely important tasks - developers, marketing guys etc. Bossism is at its best while working with these guys. But thats the catch. Though they might not be ideating, they must still feel they are a part of the big guys gang - not just employees. Because they are the ones who will do and redo work for you. They are the ones who will immensely multi task to cater to your ever increasing demands of technology and will keep the quick buck flowing. The bosses might need to do some micro management to ensure work happens, but all in all, acknowledgment and rewards must be given to these guys first. After all, the management does not deserve a pat on its back for at least the first 2 - 3 years. Walls erected does not mean anything after all! 

Meanwhile, contingencies must be looked at. An employee suddenly quits for some reason, or has a medical urgency that leaves vacuum in the management circle is something that can be extremely difficult to cope up with. Believing that your first set of guys will stick on for 2 years is almost as good as entering into denial mode and saying you will live forever! There are so many other things like being systematic and organized, proper delegation of authority, time-off and small drinking nights of bonding etc that can work wonders while you are still to lay the foundation. 

Phew! That was quite a bit of gyaan in there for someone as new me in this corporate world! I wonder how much more and how rapidly am I going to learn! After all can't wait to be the CEO and straight jump in to become a paint scrapper! 

Of start-ups and hiccups...

I came across this beautiful write up on Subroto Baghchi's blog. It talks about start-ups and how things happen or ought to happen. I guess none of my usual visitors can draw much sense out of it yet, but if you were working for a start-up, like I am, then you would be in a better position to appreciate what I have copy-pasted below: 

Three people do not build a corporation; they build a 10-people team. That team in turn goes on to build another team of ten. So, spend significant time on the strategic vision with all the senior hires. Pay attention to the on-boarding process - it begins well before the person actually comes on board. Do not wait until the joining date. From the time you have made up your mind on the right person, keep engaged and involved with exchange of ideas, information and advice until he or she actually comes on board. This is obviously within the boundaries of business sense - you do not want to take risks in matters of intellectual property either way - make sure you are not compromising yours nor are you contaminating someone else’s. After all, the person is still not part of your organization and until someone has been “badged in”, there are limits to how far you can go.

Finally, the start-up gets into stage 3 of its orbit. It is no longer a rag-tag army - or a bunch of toddlers. Now the organization has people, customers, multiple branches, systems and processes. Probably the organization is three years old!

It is time now to shed some and gain some. Taking on from Arjun, Mohinish recommends that the original team now must shift from an overwhelmingly inward focus, to an external one.

This is the time to pay attention to building a strong middle-management; it is time to focus on the robustness of operations.

Original teams rely strongly on innovation, finding solutions on the fly, trying out things never tried before and using the inventive capacity all the time.

Now, innovation alone would not do, you must build domain capability as well. Imagine you are a company that started in the wireless area. Now you have to say what you do in wireless for automotive sector, wireless in medical sector or wireless for entertainment application development! The kind of teaming required in the early stage and what you need now to build bodies of expertise are going to be very different.

Going forward, this is also the time that you have to be choosy about the kind of culture you want to take with you.  All that worked before, is not going to work going forward.

In the beginning, every one pitches in. That is what built energy, camaraderie and the romantic concept of the garage! Things now must get systematic; people cannot just be doing heroic stuff all the time. People must build respect for groups and not just individuals. Quite often, as the transition happens, the original group feels disenchanted - people miss their childhood, so to speak, and cling on. Childhood days may be beautiful but imagine remaining growth-stunted!

Teams must collectively move on; in the process they must shed some old behavior and adopt new best practices. Arjun Erry was looking at issues related to acquiring key talent that completes the team. In doing so, he underlined the importance of always going the extra mile to hire the “A” players. It is tough selling, but often the most critical first step in giving booster power to the rocket. Why “A” players? “Because”, “A”s hire “A”s, then the “B”s come. What do the “B”s do? They go and hire the “C”s. Before you know you have diluted the genetic pool of the organization and that can well mean the difference between a high performance company and just another start-up.

You can read the write-up in entirety out here: 

http://www.mindtree.com/subrotobagchi/of-start-ups-high-performance-teams-part-2/#more-48

Lessons learnt at work

I am finally learning those nuances of running a business. I am glad I have landed up on a job that will teach me how to run my shop when I eventually have one! These are some management mantras I have learnt and I think it is a good idea to share it with the world. 

1. Winning is really the most loved, admired, valued and exciting in human life. Winning and

success are the two most coveted words in all battles of life, including business.

2.  The battle for number one is always between equals.

3. Diagnosis is the first step in any effort to create a winning organization. The mind–body framework is a

practical tool for energizing such a diagnosis. A strong ‘mind’, characterized by
a high level of collective ambition, requires a clear sense of purpose and a high
level of motivation. A strong ‘body’ provides the anatomy and physiology to
enable the organization to achieve what the mind wills”.

4. A firm in an ongoing competition needs both sustainable and temporal advantage. It needs the luxury of ‘to win without fighting’ to secure the strengths and stability of its leadership position.

5. Focused action requires compatibility of minds of the members of the team; particularly, under conditions of stress of a fierce competition or battle. Since the time is invariably too short to make a move or respond, high degree of cooperation among team members is necessary. The minds of Krishna and Arjuna were most compatible as they listened to each other willingly and attentively. It is the teams that win and not the individuals, howsoever bright .