You do what you are

In the 2001 movie Along came a spider, there is an interesting quote by Morgan Freeman where he says "You do what you are" and then he further goes on to explain "I mean, you do what you are. You're born with a gift. If not that, then you get good at something along the way. And what you're good at, you don't take for granted. You don't betray it." 

Ive always wondered while watching the numerous talent shows, how the hell do they do what they do or sometimes you see someone do something at work and they are just so amazing at it. Corelating this to what Morgan Freeman quoted in the movie, they are just born with that talent to do it or it is through sheer hard work that they learned to do it. I believe that you would put in the hard work only in two circumstances, one if you are in a perilous  situation and you have to learn to do it you don't have much of a choice or you love what you are doing and want to become the very best at it. 

Finding out what you love doing and doing more and more of it until you are the very best is important to find value in what you do and thus giving meaning to life or as Morgan Freeman puts it if you don't "you will betray yourself. Its a sad thing.". 

You are not a machine

This is an interesting illustration that resonated with a discussion I was having recently about doing ones best. It perfectly encapsulates how you need to give your best each day, but the outcome is not always better than the last. 

Some days the outcome is amazing, a high that you need to cherish and the next day as you give your best, the outcome might not be as good or better than the last. This should not lead to disappointment and dejection. It is to be expected as we are not machines, and we have our good days and our bad. We are also influenced heavily by the environment around us and circumstances each day that may not be in our control that will not allow the same. 

Enjoying what one does makes it easier to give ones best. When you do not enjoy what you do it is hard to commit yourself to it whole heartedly. So find what is it you enjoy doing and then master that and deliver your best to get the best outcomes. 

Traits of an effective manager

Effective Managers are those that can leverage the strength of their teams and achieve their goals. But to be able to do this they need to posses and showcase some important traits 

1. Effective Managers are not focused only on short term wins. They have a growth mindset that focuses on the goal. 
2. They are able to work through the difficult challenges and keep their cool. The task of solving the problem or achieving the goal is never easy and they are able to weather the storms by keeping theirs and their teams focus. 
3. An effective manager has a curious mind, they are always thinking of different possibilities on either solving problems or possible paths to achieve the goal.
4. An effective manager is able to make tough decisions and they are ready to face the consequences. Quick informed decisions are important to be made in order to move the team forward. 
5. A good and strong manager should be able to inspire their team. They are effective communicators that can communicate clearly and can articulate the tasks the team needs to accomplish to achieve the goal.  
6. An effective manager gets a deep understanding of the problem they are trying to solve. By ensuring this deep understanding, they are able to provide the necessary direction and guidance to the team and are also able to cancel out all the negativity around them by having laser sharp focus. 
7. Effective managers manage by taking into consideration the needs of the stakeholders. Its important to have empathy. They should have an open mind and listen to their stakeholders and work towards meeting their needs. 
8. They see the bigger picture when it is fuzzy and hazy to everyone else and they strive and lead everyone towards that bigger picture. They are focused on the long term even though they suffer short term struggles.
9. Strong Effective Managers show trust in their team and do not micro manage their team. They know how to break down the tasks and give it to the team and believe in their team to deliver on them. 
10. They always protect their team. They share the successes with the team and absorb the failures. They do not call out or embarrass team members in front of outsiders and expose the weaknesses of the team. 

Building Trust with your team

As a leader or manager ensuring that trust is built with the team is very important. Trust is what ensures the team works confidently and without any doubts. 

Gaining the trust of the team is not easy and it takes time. It has to be gained through words and actions. The behaviors one must portray to build trust are 

1. Being open and frank with your team

As a leader one needs to be open with their team. Ive had managers that would give a deadline 2 days earlier than the actual deadline. The team is eventually going to find out and they will never believe in the manager again. A leader should be able to give bad news as easily as giving good news to the team. Its necessary to be open and frank with the team. 

2. Showing courage in decision making

A leader needs to have courage. Courage to make decisions, tell a team member when they are not performing well, tell stakeholders when things are not going to plan and so on. They should not shy away from the hard decisions and should be ready to absorb the consequences and carry their team through. 

3. Keeping to your commitments and promises

The leader should stand up and ensure that the commitments they make to the team are achieved. As the leader keeps their commitment, the team will start trusting the leader more. At the same time they will also start to meet their own commitments thus helping the team meet their objectives. 

4. Keeping the focus of the team razor sharp

Being focused on the objectives and ensuring the team is aligned accordingly is very important. Ensuring that the objectives of the team are clearly articulated and conveyed to the team is very important. 

5. Having the respect of the team

Having the respect of the team is very important. Insubordination should be stamped out quickly. A leader should be able to run their team, the team should not run their leader. Respect can be earned or thrust upon. The one that is earned is more powerful and long lasting. Usually doing the above four - being open, having courage, showing commitment and being focused helps gain respect. 

Communicate, communicate, communicate

 As a community manager it is very important to ensure that a 2 way communication exists between the residents of the community and the Community Management Office. I am not so focused on the modes of communication such as the call center, email, social media, messengers, walk-in and so on, this post is more about the types of communication that needs to exist. 

1. News and Information 

Everyone likes to be aware and more so aware of the things happening around them. News of happenings in the community should be sent out in a timely manner. These can be periodic once a quarter for the planned news information (Newsletters) and information that cannot wait for a newsletter. Some examples of such information that needs to be sent out are 

• Utility service interruptions due to water tank cleaning, disruption in supply, breakdown, etc
• Pest control activities and which areas to avoid
• Community Events
• Road diversions due to works happening
• New rules/processes implemented 

The information should be targeted, if there is a service interruption in a building, the information should not be sent to the whole community. Nobody likes spam and also if there is too much information sent it will be lost and not read. 

2. Communicating Fees and Charges

Nobody likes surprises especially when it comes to money. It is very important to make sure all fees and charges are clearly documented and communicated and there are no surprises. Once these fees and charges are levied on a resident, the community management team should ensure it is delivered to the resident. These invoices and the statement of account should be available to the resident to access at any point of time. 

3. Complaint Management 

In a community there would be complaints from the residents, although all community managers wish this away it is not going to be so. Residents should have an easy way to record a complaint, be acknowledged immediately that the complaint is recorded and then the complaint should be tracked to closure in a timely manner. This is very important to have in place to make sure the residents feel that they are being heard and that their concern is being addressed. 

4. Face to Face Communication 

Sometimes residents want to be heard face to face. It is important to make sure community managers and building supervisors are always available to them. An appointment system can be implemented where for an hour or two community managers and building supervisors can meet with residents either on site in the community or at the office. 

Having heart in what you do

13 years ago I wrote about how "Having pride is key to quality" and this was written in the context of the software services industry. But having worked since then mostly in the services industry, I have come to realize more and more that one needs to have "heart" in their work to give their best. 

What do I mean by putting your heart in what you do? It essentially means you care. You care about how the service is delivered, you care about the quality of the service, the timeliness of the delivery, you care about the happiness of the customer. 

When one cares, automatically every detail is addressed. This ensures a high quality of delivery, the customer experience is great and you end up with a happy customer. 

Happy customers end up giving you more business. 

Putting ones heart in what they do, has to come from within each one. It cannot be thrust upon or commanded. So find the job that you want to put your "heart" into what you do and excel at what you do. 

A case for ANPR Cameras in residential communities

 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras are cameras that can capture and digitize vehicle number plates. We know them very well for the speed radars and that is how speeding fines are issued instantly. Ive known them to be around for 8-9 years but off late they have become affordable and more widely used with integration into resident portals. 

Once ANPR cameras are installed at all the entry gates and exit gates, the most important thing to do is to integrate it into the resident portal, so that tenants and owners can register their vehicles into the system and also they can register their visitors into the system. This way every private vehicle entering into the community can be recognized. 

What are the benefits of such a system?

1. There is no recurring cost needed such as issuing RFID cards or tags. This reduces the cost of issuance of the access control. 
2. Improves the safety and security as every vehicle that is entering and leaving the community is recorded and is there for ready reference at any time. 
3. Violations with regards to parking, speeding and any other infringement can be strictly afford as you know now whose vehicle it is. 
4. Visitors that are staying longer than they are permitted can be identified easily.
5. Can understand the frequency of usage of the gates and deploy resources accordingly at high frequency hours. 
6. Get knowledge about the performance of guards at the gates by analyzing the number of times they manually overrode the system to open the barrier. 
7. Keep track of taxis entering and leaving the community with caps on how long they can stay inside the community. 
8. Do occupancy and other demographic analysis based on the type of vehicles coming to the community analyzing such attributes such as type of vehicle, vehicle manufacturer and the number of vehicles coming in and going out.
9. During any emergency you can filter exactly how many vehicles are there inside and make informed decisions accordingly. 
10. Provide accurate information to law enforcement about any vehicle under surveillance.

 The two biggest players in the United Arab Emirates is SSK Technologies and Candid Camera Systems.

Show Empathy, deliver better

If one desires to be very good at what they do, they need to do their job with empathy. Empathy is defined as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another."

Here are some situations

• When listening to an issue on the phone/in person/in an email put yourself in the customers shoes and think about how you would react if you had the same issue and what would you expect the response to be. That would help you formulate the right response to the customer.
• If a complaint has been outstanding for a long time and has not been resolved, imagine how would you feel if you had raised the same complaint with a service provider and it was not resolved for a long time. This will help you react and address the complaint a lot quicker, knowing that you would not have liked that to happen to you.
• You want to make the numbers look good for your manager and you end up closing a complaint even though it is not yet resolved. How would you feel if such a complaint you raised is closed prematurely by the service provider without resolving the whole issue?
• if you do not have the knowledge to address the customers queries and complaints, react and respond in a way that you would expect a service provider to react if you called in and they could not address your query or complaint.
• You find a complaint opened for a long time with no response. Would you be okay if a service provider of yours had one of your complaints opened for a long time without closing it or responding to it?
• When responding to a query or complaint, review it by putting yourself in the readers shoes and evaluate if you would be satisfied if you received such a response.

Customer Service in the Digital Age

Customer Service is defined as "the assistance provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services.". In the digital age we live in Customer Service goes much beyond how we greet and serve our customers. It also includes how and where we serve them.

1. Go to your customer

No longer do customers have to come to you to buy a product or a service, technology enables us to go to the customer and provide them with the product or service they require. At the very least, its important to have a good technology platform both on the web and mobile where customers can get their service or product at the click of a button. 

2. Provide services in a predictable standardized manner 

From the colors used on the website/app to the navigation to each service, its important to be standardized and at the same time the company needs to be very predictable in how the service is delivered. This is where automation plays a big part, reducing human intervention in the processes to deliver a service increases the predictability of the service. This in turn improves customer service. 

2. Understanding and predicting your customer 

It is possible with technology to understand and predict your customer through Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. The more they interact with your technology platform, the more you understand about their needs. The more you align with your customers needs, this way you can serve them better by giving your customers what they need. 

3. Serving them on the platform they already are on

Expecting customers to download an app or visit a website may not be soon the preferred way of reaching them. They will expect to get their service through their Alexa or Siri interfaces. They would want to talk and be able to get the answers they are looking for, book the service or order for something. It is important to make it easier for customers to reach you through the apps of their choice in order to provide them superior customer service. 

Not adapting to the digital age to serve customers better might result in the following. Hope it never comes true for any organization.

Communicate like a leader

In the last post I was looking at why is it important that leaders have good communication skills. But what do I mean when I talk about communication skills, does it mean just the fact that I can write a good grammatically correct email or can talk the fluently and clearly? Its far from that, yes those skill are important but leaders communicate differently, they have some additional skills that make them so effective.

1. Trust and Belief

When leaders communicates, they communicate so that the team trusts and believes in what they are saying. It is the foundation on which all teams are built. If at any point of time trust of belief in the leader is lost, the team is lost. So when a leader communicates he should build the confidence of the team to believe in what he is saying and he should stand by his word. 

2. Know your team 

However big the team might be, leaders take the trouble to know and empathize with individuals in their team. They know how to engage each and everyone in their team. When talking in a group they know how to make each one feel like they are addressing them personally. If this means getting down into the trenches to know your team, then thats what needs to be done by the leader. 

3. Communicating with an open mind

No leader is perfect and no leader is a know it all. Leaders should have an open mind that there are other people better in the team and should have the confidence to acknowledge it, appreciate it and nurture it. A good leader should be open to criticism and challenging opposing points of view. 

4. Be Knowledgeable

When communicating, the leader needs to do it from a position of being knowledgeable on the subject. They need to build confidence in the team, that they have someone to look up to and take guidance from. If you are not knowledgeable in some particular area of expertise, let those that are in the team take the lead and provide the necessary guidance. 

5. Listen more and read between the lines 

A lot of communication is done by silently listening with an open mind. Not all is openly said, its important to learn to read between the lines and to observe team dynamics. Its important for leaders to keep their eyes and ears open and to absorb everything around them increasing their awareness of everything happening around them. 

6. Body Language 

Leaders body language should always show confidence however dire the situation is. A sulking broken leader is never going to inspire their team. Giving the right encouragement, showing that you are in control, engaging with the team, rewarding their achievements and hard work at the same time being firm and positive goes a long way in communicating to the team how you feel. Emotions of the team reflect the emotions of the leader. A defeated leader is a defeated team. 

Why leaders should have good communication skills?

We all start our careers in the junior levels and then work our way up the corporate ladder. As you rise up in the hierarchy it is very important to have good communication skills and to keep improving them, this includes both oral and written communication skills. Here are some of my thoughts on why communication skills important

Leaders need to inspire 

The team is going through a difficult phase, could be tough deadlines, things not working according to plan, unexpected roadblocks and so on. It is at this time you see leaders stepping in and inspiring a team to march on, to continue to strive forward and overcome this tough period. A leader should be able to raise the morale of the team and to remind them that they are capable of overcoming all challenges. This is done by communicating with the team effectively and inspirationally. 

Leaders need to show vision 

Leaders should always understand the bigger picture. They should be able to communicate this bigger picture to the team. This bigger picture needs to be clearly articulated to the team so that each one of them understands it and is on board to achieve it. 

Communicate team achievements 

All of the achievements need to be communicated by the Leader to the Stakeholders in a clear and concise manner. This will keep the team motivated and at the same time ensure the confidence of the Stakeholders in the team. 

Ensuring open communication in the team

A team that communicates well tends to stay together and work in a coordinated manner. Most teams are inspired to communicate better, when the leader of the team communicates well. 

The following tips can help leaders communicate effectively

• Know your team well
• Practice what you preach
• Listen actively
• Admit when you are wrong
• Do not procrastinate/delay to communicate bad things
• Be clear and concise
• Use story telling to communicate ideas and thoughts

What I have realized over time is that one needs to start becoming more extroverted as they move up the corporate ladder or enter into entrepreneurial activities. They should not be shy to state their thoughts and opinions and should be ready to speak up both in public and private. Those that communicate well tend to rise up and get recognized quickly.

Composing a Masterpiece

In an orchestra there are many individual great and very accomplished players of various instruments. Yet when they all play to the same composition together they bring out something special that they could never bring out when they play individually. And if they all play their own tune it never sounds great. Sounds more like noise.

Its the same with any team or a startup, there are many accomplished members of the staff but unless they all play to the same composition they will not produce the music of success. And if they all play their own music it never sounds good and it feels like the team is pulling in different directions.

That's where a composer plays a very crucial role, to write the music the way they envision it and then get everyone on the team to play to that composition.

This needs to be fine tuned everyday so that the orchestra plays in tune and is able to adjust to the everyday changes that are bound to occur.

Who is the composer in your team? Who writes the music for your team? Is your team ready to write the next masterpiece?

Being Relevant

The IT industry is a very fast changing environment and there are new languages being invented, new technologies being uncovered and new methodologies being proposed. At the same time there are better equipped smarter and more enthusiastic youngsters that are passing out of university all excited to be part of the world building the next exciting thing to hit the technology market.

Given this situation its quite a challenge for someone who has already been working in the industry for sometime to continue to stay relevant and know and understand all the time what is happening and at the same time being acquainted with the technology and the tools that the people are using and the customers are demanding.

But it is important that one does stay acquainted and relevant to the changing times. If you don't then there is every chance that one can get rolled over by either the technology or by the super smart young kids coming out of university.

Learning never ceases and if you stop learning that would be the start of your decline. There is no reason now to stop learning in this age of online courses (coursera, udemy, many more), YouTube and many more platforms.

Keep Learning. Stay Relevant.

Task Execution Vs Task Leadership

Ever been in this situation, you give a task to a member of your team and every few minutes the person would come back to you and ask you for feedback or queries and then you feel you are going nowhere with the task (as many a time you do not know the answers and would have to research) and the person feels that they have put in a lot of effort. 

Alternatively you have the situation where you give a task to the member of your team, they understand what is the end goal of the task, they take all the inputs from you that you have to offer, go back to their desk and do all the research needed to execute, come back with a plan, resources needed and an activity list to execute the task and on approval sets about silently executing the task and only providing you periodic updates on the progress. 

Which of these two team members would you prefer to work with? The answer is quite obvious and this is task execution vs task leadership. Its easy to find people who can execute tasks, but that leaves you to do all the thinking and making the plan. This slows down execution and can leave a lot of things on your desk waiting to be completed. 

Find team members who can show leadership in understanding of what needs to be done and then doing whatever it takes to get it done rather than team members who can only execute what you give them to do. This is what differentiates a great team member from a good team member. 

Water Politics

Its amazing how the actions of one party that is less than 2 years old can get the whole nation to sit up and watch by just changing the policy on how water is billed to the residents of that state. With just that one move they manage to get prime time TV debates and every other state trying their best to replicate that model although it should not really be too hard given the amount of money each state already spends on subsidies. Water is becoming increasingly a resource that needs to be carefully consumed with a growing population and greater pollution of the existing water bodies it is becoming harder and harder to find cheaper sources of water.

Countries like Canada with the 5 great lakes have the largest body of fresh water available at their fingertips and since they are all glacier fed lakes they are perpetually being refreshed with more fresh water. The Arab countries with the desert and all the development taking place have to use desalination plants to meet their water needs. Every drop of fresh water is expensive to make and even then its not the very best quality of water and its at times cheaper to get gas for your car than to buy water.

India lies somewhere in the middle of these 2 countries - we neither have abundant water nor do we have no water. Its just that we manage to politicise the issue of water. Whether it is water sharing agreements between states or the price of water in the urban areas its all politicized and this trend is dangerous. Serious effort should be made to manage the water we have and use it efficiently or else our future generations are going to pay a severe price for water.

Crime in India

It was bound to happen at some point of time - the tragic rape of the girl and the bungling of the case by the police and the administration with the politicians non-committal and making stupid remarks about women leading to public anger. The problem is not with the law. There is no point in getting the death penalty for rape - the reason being that if the death penalty comes in then there will be more ambiguity added to the law such as "rarest of rare cases" with additional procedures such as getting a presidential assent and so on. Thus never bringing a case to an end.

What we need is a strong police and administration that is fair, thorough and decisive in their action against the culprits. We need the perpetrators of the crime arrested quickly and convicted as quickly so that they are scared that in no time they will pay for their crime. Its the fear of facing the punishment that will reduce crime. Having a punishment which has no way of being implemented because the process is weak will not reduce crime, it will only embolden the criminals for they know they won't be punished.

I am not sure what is the process in India once the sexual offender is freed from prison but there should be curbs and monitoring in place to monitor their activities. I know this is not easy to implement but if thought out i am sure that ways can be worked out with the technology we have these days to put these monitors in place on these offenders.

What we need is an investment in the police to strengthen it and train it to protect the citizens that it exists for. We need investment in more judges and courts that can give out speedy justice. We need investment to be made in good forensics and investigators that can create water tight cases that will stand up in a court of law. We need the police and the administration to be free of political influence. If we do this it will automatically create the deterrents.

60 seconds on the internet

Ever wondered what happens on the internet every minute? This picture gives that view so clearly. The amount of information that gets created is just incredible. Its also getting easier to find information we are looking for with a lot of specialized sites for curating the data. It is also easy now to reach out and ask people for solutions and its fantastic how random people from around the world are so enthusiastic to help out.

Mindless Killing : Need for gun control

The debate around gun control has been going on for some time now but I think the US has reached a point where they have to take some hard and tough decisions around gun control. The second amendment gives the person the right to carry arms but it was written more than 200 years ago when weapons were not as lethal and accurate as they are these days. These weapons can discharge 100s of bullets in a matter of seconds with deadly accuracy and cause maximum damage in a very short while which was demonstrated in such a brutal manner in the killing of 20 innocent children. Its time to take serious decisive action against assault weapons that can discharge large number of bullets in a short time.

Windows 8 and Office 2013

About 3 weeks ago I took the plunge to install Windows 8 and office 2013 on my 4 year old laptop that was crawling. It was a spur of the moment decision due to the frustration of my laptop just not responding to me. Now I don't regret that decision at all. My laptop has got a new lease of life. Its much faster and very responsive, the UI looks modern and sleek and all the software that I had on my Windows 7 OS works like a charm.

I did not do an upgrade, I did a complete rebuild of my laptop with Windows 8. So that kind of cleaned out 4 years of junk that I had accumulated and I started off with a clean machine. The whole transition from Windows 7 to Windows 8 including backup and restore of my data and installing all the applications I needed took me less than half a day. This is my fastest OS build ever since I started using Windows since way back in 1992.

What do I like about Windows 8
1. As mentioned already its fast and responsive. All the applications open so much more faster and work so much more better.
2. Interface to the XBox 360 is nice. You open your video and then just do a share-to and choose the xbox console and it all works.
3. The live tiles on the desktop are nice to look at but I really don't find that much use to them as I rarely work from the desktop. But it really brings your desktop alive.

What I do not like about Windows 8
1. The removal of the start button from the desktop. Since the desktop is the traditional desktop on Windows they should have left the start button in there. There are applications you can install to get similar features. Click here to read more about them.
2. The skype program comes with the metro UI but many of the features that we love in skype are missing such as screen sharing and adding other participants to an existing call and it is really not that easy to have multiple conversations at the same time in the metro UI of skype. Also since it is a metro UI you do not have access to your desktop and if there are other conversations going on in other chat programs such as GTalk you get no notification that there is a chat message waiting for you. The metro UI is really not user friendly on a desktop where a lot of multi tasking goes on.
3. The Metro UI menu options takes a bit of getting used to. Finding things on the Metro UI that one is used to finding in a particular place takes some time and this can lead to a bit of frustration.  So Google becomes your best friend to find out where the option is.

My opinion is move to Windows 8. Its a fun interface that is fresh and its just so responsive when you do something on it.

Office 2013 comes with a very bland flat clean interface that feels odd when you first start it up having got used to the beveled buttons and the 3D interface of previous office products. I found it odd for a while to have the menu and the content area in the same white color thus not having the clear demarcation between the two. But again its fast, responsive and sleek so if you get a chance to move to it you should. In terms of feature set I have not used any of the features that are new in it like its integration into sky drive, syncing across devices (will try it out when I get my Windows phone), PDF Editing (Nice !!! - Didn't know it till I read this article).

In terms of feature set its not really a big upgrade from Office 2010 so you can move to it at your own pace.

Build your brand and assets

Right from the beginning it is important for every startup to think about how they are going to build up the brands and the assets of the organization. If the organization starts up doing software products then this is a lot easier, but if the organization starts up by doing software services then this might seem very hard but it is important that a framework is put in place to capture and grow every asset the company is building over time.

People come and go in an organization the only thing constant are the brands and the assets the company builds over time. The organization even if it is in the software services space should always think about how they are going to add to these assets because it is these assets that in the long run will build value for the organization.

Building skills in the people working in the organization does not work in the long run, one cannot stop them from leaving the organization and when they leave, the knowledge that they gained which is the asset the organization markets and sells leaves with them in turn making the organization poorer. Physical assets in the form of software products and well documented processes that are maintained never leave the organization. They can be picked up by others and carried forward.