My own quote !!

Good thing about recession is the happiness that comes with the recovery !!

My own quote

"Calling client out for dinner is like calling your girl friend out for a date the first time. Both need courage."

Personal Metrics

It is that time of the year for many companies where they will be closing the books and starting a new financial year. Yes, It is a new year and every new year has to come with resolution(s). Wanted to share some thoughts on creating what is called “Personal Metrics” or “Personalized Metrics”. I am sure most of you dwell on metrics day-in & day-out would hate to hear one more. Have you ever thought about setting yourself a comprehensive metric plan that you can track year over year? Nothing improves without a plan, execute, monitor, corrective action life cycle. Your professional life is no exception. Keep in mind you are answerable for your own growth. What goes into your resume is more important than what goes into your bank account. How about this tracking plan? Create a table and compare this with last year. Set a target for next year.

# No Personal Metric
1 Help your customer (could be internal customer also)
with one extra thing
2 Help your boss with one extra thing
3 Introduce friends to HR
4 Be a reference to your friends
5 Learn one new skill
6 Work on one extra initiative
7 Comment on a blog
8 Provide your thoughts on facebook, twitter or your own
9 improve one thing in your existing hobby (one extra book, exercise, cricket, art, music)
10 Friends relationship – increase by one
11 Family relationship take one goal
12 Charity - one extra - teach a kid, sponsor event, donate cloth, food
13 Convert one person who is in trouble (smoker, drink, job, studies)
14 Exercise routine – Improve one cycle
15 Include a mentor in your life
16 Change one eating habit
17 One certification
18 Increase income by x %
19 Decrease expense by y %
20 One extra vacation
21 One long term investment for a small amount

Happy New Year to your company !!

Productivity measure & KRA

During our professional career many times one would be challenged with productivity questions. If you are a manager or a supervisor you are responsible for your team's productivity as well. People are not born equal and hence this measure can not be the same for all resources working in a team. However you can't differentiate them openly when you set your KRA's. The way you can solve this problem is by keeping productivity targets at the team level rather than keeping them at individual level. If the team wins the organization wins !!

Meeting with Narayana Murthy - Infosys

I am very excited to publish this post.
This is once in a life time opportunity that just happened to me last weekend. I attended one of the fund raiser events for Akshaya Patra a non-profit organization that feeds more than one million kids in India where Mr. Narayana Murthy - Chairman of the board of Infosys was a key note speaker. BV Jagadeesh a family friend and a well wisher to my 2 children invited me to this event. The way I would introduce BV to anyone, "BV is a great human being who treats every one (Narayana Murthy to my 13 year old daughter) the same way". In my opinion this quality of his has turned him to be a successful serial entrepreneur & venture capitalist in the bay area. I see him involved in charity events through out the year. He & his wife Anu share similar thoughts when it comes to charity. I have seen many rich people rich through the wealth they acquired, there are a few who are rich at heart more than the richness through wealth. BV is one of them. I wish them a long meaningful charity filled life !!

When BV invited my family to this dinner event I was not sure and didn't really understand the purpose of the event. Since we were busy the whole day with many other weekend classes and activities we didn't really plan on attending this event. On our way back we stopped at India Community Center (ICC) where this event was held to hand over some things to my daughter who was performing a cultural program for the attendees. BV and his wife Anu insisted that we stay back and watch the show. As mentioned earlier this was a charity show attended by 250 business delegates from the bay area. This show generated few hundred thousands of dollars in this economy leading to $ 1 Million mark set by the Akshaya Patra foundation (visit http://www.foodforeducation.org/ for more details and contribute to this noble cause if you can)
At the end of the show I stayed back to greet a few business folks I know through my business connection. We were about to sign off from BV who introduced me to Mr. Narayana Murthy a simple man who still leads a simple life. I have no words to explain how I cherish this moment in my life. NM as you know is one of the architects of the Indian IT industry and a great man when it comes to charity. I am yet to come out of this excitement. An unplanned visit brought this great moment to me in my life.

My sincere thanks to BV & his family.

Professional Relationship - Opinion !!

We all build relationship with individuals (Customers, Boss, Peers) during our professional career. These relationships make us successful. Referrals from these relationship is the stepping stone on the ladder that takes us to the next level. How we build these relationship is the most important aspect of this exercise. If our relationships are built based on a value foundation then it is repeatable when there is change in the power house. For eg. you may be very close to a customer because of the relationship you have built with an individual in that company or you work very well with your boss as your boss likes your style of functioning. As you know that in this dynamic world the dependency on these relationships are so temporary. It only takes a small re-organization in that company to bring an end to your success. However, if your relationship is based on some fundamentals or value that you delivered to build this relationship it is only question of time that you would repeat the same with the new team that has taken over this organization.

I suggest you validate your relationships at regular intervals and come up with a risk mitigation for weak relationships that is making you successful today but will be a threat to your future development.

Professional Success !!

How do you validate your success?
Go back to your old company that you worked for and ask the following questions.
1. Do they miss your services?
2. Ask them to name one thing that you created there that they still use and remember you for that
3. Ask them to name one thing that was working is broken after you left